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TRi-WE£KLYPUBLlCAT10l/ OF THE~BEST CURRttJT & STANDARD LITERATURE 



Vol. 8. No. 437. Sept. 25, 1884. Annual Subscription $30.00. 

TALES OF 

TWO IDLE 
APPRENTICES 


CHARLES DICKENS 

AND 

WILKIE COLLINS 


Entered at the Post Office, N. Y., as second-class matter. 
Copj’right, 1884, by John W. Lovell Co. 


:NEW-Y0RK • 


+ JOHN-W* Lovell - Coa\pany4- 

'=“~-J='»T t4 Btl6 VESEY STREET 





liiMt OLO^ BlHSIBOfor this volume can be obtained from any bookseller er newsdealer, price 19cts. 

i 



'LOVELL’S LIBRARY.-CATALOGOE. 


ic Hvoerion 

!• Outre-Mer 20 

The Happy Boy lo 

4 ^ Ame 10 

j^rankenstein 10 

6* TheLast of theMohicans.20 

g . Clytie 20 

. The Moonstone, Part 1. 10 
a. The Moonstone, Part II. 10 

aC. Oliver Twist 20 

i.f. The Coming Race 10 

i?,, Leila 16 

13. The Three Spaniards. . .20 
14 The Tricks of the Greeks. 20 

J5 L' Abbe Constantin 20 

16. tVeckles • ..20 

I', . The Dark Colleen 20 

t8. They were Married 10 

iQ. SeekefS After God 20 

ao. The Spanish Nim 10 

21. Green Mountain Boys . . 20 

22. Fleurette 20 

23. Second Thoughts 20 

24. The New Magdalen .... 20 

25 Divorce. 20 

26 Life of Washington 20 

*7 Social Etiquette 15 

s8c Single Heart, Double 

Face - 

89. Irene; or, The Lonely 

Manoi 20 

Vice Versa 20 

Ernest Maltravers 20 

33. The Haunted House. . . 10 

33. John Halifax 20 

34 800 Leagues on the 

Amazon 

35. TheCwtOgram 10 

36. Life of Manon 20 

37. Paul and Virginia 10 

38c A Tale of Two Cities .... 20 

39. The Hermits.. 20 

40. An Adventure in Thule, 

etc.. 

41. A Marriage in High Life2o 

42. Robin 20 

43. Two on a Tower 20 

44. Rasselas 10 

45o Alice ; a sequel to Er- 
nest Maltravers- 20 

46. Duke of Kandos 20 

47. Baron Munchausen 10 

4k A Princess of Thule 20 

49. The Secret Despatch. . . .20 
50. Early Days of Christian- 
ity, 2 Parts, each 20 

51. Vicar of Wakefield 10 

52. Progress and Poverty. . .20 

53. The Spy 20 

54. East Lynne 20 

55. A Strange Story 20 

56. Adam Bede, Part 1 15 

Adam Bede, Part II 15 

57. The Golden Shaft . .20 

5?. Portia 

59. LaSi. Days of Pompeii. . . 20 

60. The Two Duchesses 20 

61. TomBrcwn’sSchoolDays.2o 
62. Wooing O’t, 2 Pts. each. 1 5 

63. The Vendetta 20 

64 Hypatia, Part 1 15 

Hypatia^ Part 11 15 


65. 

66. 


67. 


68. 

69. 

70. 

71- 

72. 

73- 

74- 

75- 
76. 

77- 

78. 

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80. 

81. 

82. 

83. 


84, 


85. 

86 . 

87. 

88 . 

89. 

90. 

91. 


92. 

93. 

94. 


95’ 


96. 

97- 

98. 

99. 
100. 


101. 

102. 

103. 

104. 

105. 

106. 

107. 


108. 

109. 
no. 

in. 

112- 

I13' 

114. 


115. 

1 16. 


117. 
j 18. 


ng. 

120. 

121. 

122. 

123. 

124. 

125. 

126. 


Selma 15 

Margaret and her Brides- 
maids 20 

Horse Shoe Robinson, 

2 Parts, each 15 

Gulliver’s Travels 20 

Amos Barton 10 

The Berber 20 

Silas Marner 10 

Queen of the County . . .20 

Life of Cromwell 15 

Jane Eyre. 20 

Child’sHist’ry of Engrd.20 

Molly Bawn 20 

Pillone 15 

Phyllis. 20 

Romola, Part 1 15 

Romola, Part 1 1 .15 

Science in ShortChapters.20 

Zanoni 20 

A Daughter of Heth .... 20 
Right and Wrong Uses of 

the Bible 20 

Night and Morning, Pt. 1. 15 
NightandMorningjPt.II 15 

Shandon Bells 20 

Monica 10 

Heart and Science 20 

The Golden Calf 20 

The Dean’s Daughter.. .20 

Mrs. Geoffrey 20 

Pickwick Papers, Part 1. 20 
Pickwick Papers, Part 1 1. 20 

Airy, Fairy Lilian .20 

Macleod of Dare 20 

Tempest Tossed, Part 1. 20 
Tempest Tossed, P’t II. 20 
Letters from High Lat- 
itudes 20 

Gideon Fleyce 20 

India and Ceylon 20 

The Gypsy Queen 20 

The Admiral’s Ward. . . .20 
N import, 2 Parts, each ..15 

Harry Holbrooke. 20 

Tritons, 2 Parts, each . . 15 
Let Nothing You Dismay. 10 
Lady Audley ’s Secret ... 20 
Woman’s Place To-day. 20 
Dunallan, 2 parts, each. 15 
Housekeeping and Home 

making 15 

No New Thing 20 

The Spoopendyke Papers. 20 

False Hopes 15 

Labor and Capital 20 

Wanda, 2 parts, each ... 15 
M ore W ords about Bible . 20 
Monsieur Lecocq, P’t. 1. 20 
Monsieiir Lecocq, Pt. 1 1. 20 
An Outline of Irish Hist. 10 

Tlie Lerouge Case 20 

Paul Clifford 20 

A New Lease of Life.. .20 

Bourbon Lilies 20 

Other People’s Money.. 20 

Lady of Lyons 10 

Ameline de Bourg 15 

A Sea Queen 20 

The Ladies Lindores. . .20 

Haunted Hearts 10 

LoyS) Liord Beresford. c .20 


127, 


128. 

129. 

130. 


131- 

132. 


133. 


134- 

135. 

136. 
13 7« 
138. 
139' 

140. 

141. 

142. 


143- 

144, 


145 


146. 

147- 

148. 

149. 

150. 


151- 

152. 

153. 

153- 

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158. 


159- 

160. 

161. 

162. 

163. 

164. 

165. 

166. 


167. 

168. 

169. 

170. 

171. 

172. 
173* 
174. 
175- 
176. 
177- 

178. 

179. 

180. 

181. 

182. 
183- 

184. 

185. 


Under Two Flags, Pt I. 
Under Two Flags, Pt II. ^ 

Money J 

In Peril of His Life 2; 

India; What can it teach 

us? 

Jets and Flashes 

Moonshine and Margue- 
rites I, 

Mr. Scarborough’s 
Family, 2 Parts, each . . i 

Arden 

Tower of Percemont.. ..2^ 

Yolande 2 

Cruel London 2 

The Gilded Clique 

Pike County Folks 

Cricket on the Hearth.. i 

Henry Esmond 2 

Strange Adventures of a 

Phaeton 

Denis Duval 

OldCuriosityShop.P’t I.i 
01dCuriosityShop,P’rt II.i 

Ivanhoe, Part I i 

Ivanhoe, Part II 

White Wings 2 

The Sketch Book 21 

Catherine 

Janet’s Repentance 

Bamaby Rudge, Part I..1 
Barnaby Rudge, Part II. i 

Felix Holt 

Richelieu 

Sunrise, Part 1 

Sunrise, Part II i 

Tour of the World in 80 

Days 2< 

Mystery of Orcival 

Level, the Widower.... i< 
Romantic Adventures of 

a Milkmaid r 

DavidCopperfield,Part 1.2< 
DavidCopperfield,P’rt 1 1.2' 

Charlotte Temple . . i< 

Rienzi, 2 Parts, each . . . i] 
Promise of Marriage . . . . ii 

Faith and Unfaith 2> 

The Happy Man v 

Barry Lyndon 2< 

Eyre’s Acquittal n 

20,000 Leagues Under the 

Sea^ 2( 

Anti-Slavery Days 2> 

Beauty’s Daughters 2< 

Beyond the Sunrise 2 

Hard Times 2 

Tom Cringle’s Log .... 21 

Vanity Fair 

Underground Russia. . . . 
Middlemarch, 2 Pts. each.2 

Sir Tom 2 

Pelham ....2( 

The Story of Ida r 

Madcap Violet 2' 

The Little Pilgrim n 

Kilmeny ....2' 

Whist, or Bumble puppy?.!' 
That Beautiful Wretch.. 2' 

Her Mother’s Sin 2< 

Green Pastures, etc 2' 

Mysterious IsLmd« Pt 1*'^ 


F) CO 


THE LAZY TOUR 




CIIAKLES DICKENS. 


DEC 17 1384 I 


NEW YORK: 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY. 

14 AND 1 6 Vesey Street. 


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TROW'S 

PRINTINaAND BOOKBINDING COMPANY, 
NEW YORK. 


THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE 
ArPRENTIGES. 


CHAPTER TPIE FIRST. 


I N the autumn month of September, eighteen hundred 
and fifty-seven, wherein these presents bear date, two 
idle apprentices, exhausted by the long hot summer and 
the long hot work it had brought with it, ran away from 
their employer. They were bound to a highly merito- 
rious lady (named Literature), of fair credit and repute, 
though, it must be acknowledged, not quite so highly es- 
teemed in the City as she might be. This is the more 
remarkable as there is nothing against the respectable lady 
in that quarter, but quite the contrary ; her family having 
rendered eminent service to many famous citizens of 
London. It may be sufficient to name Sir William 
Walworth, Lord Mayor under King Richard the Second, 
at the time of Wat Tyler’s insurrection, and Sir Richard 
Whittington ; which latter distinguished man and magistrate 
was doubtless indebted to the lady’s family for the gift of 
his celebrated cat. There is also strong reason to suppose 
that they rang the Ilighgate bells for him with their own 
hands. 

The misguided young men who thus shirked their 
duty to the mistress from whom they had received many 
favors, were actuated by the low idea of making a perfectly 
idle trip, in any direction. They had no intention of go- 
ing anywhere, in particular ; they wanted to see nothing, 
they wanted to know notliing, they wanted to learn nothi 


1(^6 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


wanted to do nothing. They wanted only to be idle. 
They took to themselves (after Hogarth) the names of Mr. 
Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis Goodchild ; but there was 
not a moral pin to choose between them, and they were 
idle ill the last degree. 

Between Francis and Thomas, however, there was this 
difference of character ; Goodchild was laboriously idle, 
and would take upon himself any amount of pains and 
labor to assure himself that he was idle ; in short, had no 
better idea of idleness than that it was useless indus- 
try, Thomas Idle, on the other hand, was an idler of 
the unmixed Irish or Neapolitan type ; a passive idler, 
a born and bred idler, a consis tent idler, who practised 
what he would have preached if he had not been too idle 
to preach ; a one entire and perfect chrysolite of idleness. 

The two idle apprentices found themselves, within a 
few hours of their escape, walking down into the North 
of England. That is to say, Thomas was lying in a 
meadow, looking at the railway trains as they passed over 
a distant viaduct — which was his idea of walkincf down 
into the North ; while Francis was walking a mile due 
South against time — which was his idea of walking down 
into the North. In the mean time the day waned, and 
the mile-stones remained unconquered. 

‘‘ Tom,’^ said Goodchild, “ the sun is getting low. Up, 
and let us go forward !” 

“ Nay,”quoth Thomas Idle, “ I have not done with Annie 
Laurie yet.’’ And he proceeded with that idle but popu- 
lar ballad, to the effect that for the bonnje young person 
of tliat name he would ‘day him doon and dee,” — equiva- 
lent, in prose, to lay him down and die. 

'‘What an ass that fellow was!” cried Goodchild, with 
the bitter emphasis of contempt. 

“ Which fellow ? ” asked Thomas Idle. 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


167 


The fellow in your song.’ Lay him doon and dee ] 
Finely he’d show off before the girl by doing that. A 
Sniveller Why couldn’t he get up, and puuch somebody’s 
head!” 

“Whose?” asked Thomas Idle. 

“ Anybody’s. Everybody’s would be better than no- 
lody’s ! If I fell into that state of mind about a girl, do 
you think I’d lay me doon and dee ? No, Sir ; ” proceed- 
ed Goodchild, with a disparaging assumption of the Scot- 
tish accent, “ I’d get me oop and peetch into somebody. 
Wouldn’t you ?” 

“ I wouldn’t have anything to do with her,” yawned 
Thomas Idle. “ Why should I take the trouble ?” 

“ It’s no trouble, Tom, to fall in love,” said Goodchild, 
shaking his head. 

“It’s trouble enough to fall out of it, once you’re in it,” 
retorted Tom. “ So I keep out of it altogether. It 
would be better for you, if you did the same.” 

Mr. Goodchild, who is always in love with somebody, 
and not unfrequently with several objects at once, made 
no reply. He heaved a sigh of the kind which is termed^ 
by the lower orders “ a bellowser,” and then, heaving Mr. 
Idle on his feet (who was not half so heavy as the sigh), 
urged him northward. 

These two had sent their personal baggage on by train ; 
only retaining each a knapsack. Idle now applied him- 
self to constantly regretting the train, to tracking it through 
the intricacies of Bradshaw’s Guide, and finding out where 
it was now — and where now — and where now — and to ask- 
ing what was the use of walking when you could ride at 
such a pace as that. Was it to see the country ? If 
that was the object, look at it out of carriage windows. 
Til ere was a great deal more of it to be seen there, than 
here. Besides, who wanted to see the country ? Nobody. 
And, again, who ever did walk? Nobodv. Fellows set 

b 


168 


THE LAZY TOUR OE 


off to walk, but tliey never did it. They came back and 
said they did, but they didn’t. Then why should he 
walk ? He wouldn’t walk. He swore it by this mile- 
stone ! 

It was the fifth from London, so far had they penetra- 
ted into the North. Submitting to the powerful chain 
of argument, Goodchiid proposed a return to the Metrop- 
olis and a falling back upon Euston Square Terminus. 
Thomas assented with alacrity, and so they walked down 
into the North by the next morning’s express, and carried 
their knapsacks in the luggage-van. 

It was like all other expresses, as every express is and 
must be. It bore through the harvested country a smell 
like a large washing-day, and a sharp issue of steam as 
from a huge brazen tea-urn. The greatest power nature 
and art combined, it yet glided over dangerous heights in 
the sight of people looking up from fields and roads, as 
smootlily and unreally as a light miniature plaything. 
Now, the engine shrieked in hysterics of such intensity, 
that it seemed desirable that the men who had her in 
charge should hold her feet, slap her hands, and bring 
her to ; now, burrowed into tunnels with a stubborn 
and undemonstrative energy so confusing that the train 
seemed to be flying back into leagues of darkness. Here 
were station after station, swallowed up by the express 
y/ithout stopping ; here stations where it fired itself 
in like a volley of cannon-balls, swooped away four 
country-people with nosegays and three men of business 
with portmanteaus, and fired itself off again, bang, bang, 
bang ! At long intervals were uncomfortable refreshment 
rooms, made more uncomfortable by the scorn of Beauty 
toward Beast, the public (but to whom she never relented 
as Beauty did in the story, toward the other Beast), 
and whei*e sensitive stomachs were fed, with a contempt 
uous sharpness occasioning indigestion. Here, again, were 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 

stations with nothing going but a bell, and wonderful 
wooden razors set aloft on great posts, shaving the air. 
In these fields, the horses, sheep, and cattle were well used 
to the thundering meteor, and didn’t mind ; in those, they 
were all set scampering together, and a herd of pigs 
scoured after them. The pastoral country darkened, be- 
came coaly, became smoky, became inf ernal, got better, got 
worse; improved again, grew rugged, turned romantic; 
was a wood, a stream, a chain of hills, a gorge, a moor, a 
ca thedral town, a fortified place, a waste. Now, miserable 
black dwellings, a black canal, and sick black towers of 
chimneys ; now, a trim garden, where the flowers were 
bright and fair; now, a wilderness of hideous altars all 
ablaze ; now, the water meadows with their fairy rings ; 
now, the mangy patch of unlet building ground outside 
the stagnant town, with the larger ring where the Circus 
was last week. The temperature changed, the dialect 
changed, the people changed, faces got sharper, manner 
got shorter, ejyes got shrewder and harder , yet all so 
quickly, that the spruce guard in the London uniform and 
silver lace had not yet rumpled his shirt-collar, delivered 
half the despatches in his shining little pouch, or read his 
newspaper. 

Carlisle ! Idle and Goodchild had got to Carlisle. It 
looked congenially and delightfully idle. Something in 
the way of public amusement had happened last month, 
and something else was going to happen before Christmas ; 
and, in the mean time, there was a lecture on India for 
those who liked it, which Idle and Goodchild did not. 
Likewise, by those who liked them, there were impres-i 
sions to be bought of all the vapid prints, going and gone, 
and of nearly all the vapid books. For those who wanted 
to put anything in missionary boxes, here were the boxes. 
For those who wanted the Reverend Mr. Podgers (artists, 
proofs, thirty shillings), here was Mr. Podgers to any 


170 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


amount. Not less gracious and abundant, Mr. Codgers, - 
also of the vineyard, but opposed to Mr. Podgers, broth- 
erly tooth and nail. Plere, were guide books to the 
neighboring antiquities, and eke the Lake country, in 
several dry and husky sorts ; here, many physically and 
morally impossible heads of both sexes, for young ladies 
to copy, in the exercise of the art of drawing ; here, 
further, a large impression of Mr. Spurgeon, solid as to 
the flesh, not to say even something gross. The working 
young men of Carlisle were drawn up, with their hands 
in their pockets, across the pavements, four and six abreast 
and appeared (much to the satisfaction of Mr. Idle) to 
have nothing else to do. The working and growing young 
women of Carlisle, from the age of twelve upward, pro- 
menaded the streets in the cool of the evening, and rallied 
the said young men. Sometimes the young men rallied 
the young women, as in the case of a group gathered 
around an accordion-player, from among whom a young 
man advanced behind a young woman for whom he ap- 
peared to have a tenderness, and hinted to her that he was 
there and playful, by giving her (he wore clogs) a kick. 

On market morning, Carlisle woke up amazingly, and 
became (to the two Idle Apprentices) disagreeably and 
reproachfully busy. There were its cattle market, its sheep 
market, and its pig market down by the river, with raw- 
boned and skock-headed Rob Roys hiding their Lowland* 
dresses beneath heavy plaids, prowling in and out among 
the animals, and flavoring the air with fumes of whisky. 
There was its corn market down the main street, with hum 
of chaffering over open sacks. There was its general 
market in the street, too, with heather brooms on which 
the purple flower still flourished, and heather baskets, 
primitive and fresh to behold. With women trying on clogs 
and caps at open stalls, and ” Bible stalls ’’ adjoining. With 
“ Doctor Mantle’s Dispensary for the cure af Human Mala- 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


171 


dies and no charge for advice/’ and with Doctor Mantle’s 
“ Laboratory of Medical, Chemical, and Botanical Science’ 
— ^both healingd, institutions established on one pair oi 
trestles, one boar and one sun-blind. With the renowned 
phrenologist from London begging to be favored (at six- 
pence each) with the company of clients of both sexes, to 
whom, on examination of their heads, he would make reve- 
lations “ enabling him or her to know themselves.” 
Through all these bargains and blessings the recruiting- 
sergeant watchfully elbowed his way, a thread of War in 
the peaceful skein. Likewise on the walls .were printed 
hints that the Oxford Blues might not be indisposed to 
hear of a few fine active young men ; and that whereas the 
standard of that distinguished corps is full six feet, grow- 
ing lads of five feet eleven ” need not absolutely despair 
of being accepted. 

Scenting the morning air more pleasantly then the buried 
majesty of Denmark did, Messrs. Idle and Goodchild rode 
away from Carlisle at eight o’clock one forenoon, bound 
for the village of Hesket-Newmarket, some fourteen mile 
distant. Goodchild (who had already begun to doubts 
whether he was idle, as his way always is when he has noth- 
ing to do) had read of a certain black old Cumberland hill or 
mountain, called Carrock, or Carrock Fell ; and had arrived 
at the conclusion that it would be the culminating triumph 
of Idle-ness to ascend the same. Thomas Idle, dwelling 
on the pains inseparable from that achievement, had ex- 
pressed the strongest doubts of the expediency, and even of 
the sanity, of the enterprise ; but Goodchild liad carried his 
point and they rode away. 

Up hill and down hill, and twisting to the right, and 
twisting to the left, and with old Skiddaw (who has vaunted 
himself a great deal more than his merits deserve ; but 
that is rather the way of the Lake country) dodging the 
Apprentices in a }>icturesque and pleasant manner. Good 


172 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


weather proof, warm, peasant houses, well white-limed, 
scantily dotting the road. Clean children coming out to 
look, carrying other clean children as big as themselves. 
Harvest still lying out and much rained upon ; here and 
there, harvest still unreaped. Well-cultivated gardens at- 
tached to the cottages, with plenty of produce forced out 
of their hard soil. Lonely nooks, and wild ; but people 
can be born, and married, and hurried in such nooks, and 
can live and love, and be loved, there as elsewhere, thank 
God ! (Mr Goodchild’s remark.) By-and-by the village. 
Black, coarse-stoned, rough-windowed houses ; some with 
outer staircases, like Swiss houses ; a sinuous and stony 
gutter winding up hill and round the corner by way of 
street. All the children running out directly. Women 
pausing in washing to peep from doorways and very 
little windows. Such were the observations of Messrs. 
Idle and Goodchild, as their conveyance stopped at 
the village shoemaker’s. Old Carrock gloomed down 
upon it all in a very ill-tempered state, and rain was be- 
ginning. 

The village shoemaker declined to have anything to do 
with Carrock. No visitors went up -Carrock. No visitors 
came there at all. Aa’ the world ganged awa’ yon. The 
driver appealed to the Innkeeper. The Innkeeper had two 
men working in the fields, and one of them should be 
called in, to go up Carrock as guide. Messrs. Idle and 
Goodchild, highly approving, entered the Innkeeper’s 
house, to drink whiskey and eat oat-cake. 

The In keeper was not idle enough — was not idle at aU, 
which was a great fault in him — but was a fine specimen 
of a north-countryman, or any kind of man. He had a 
ruddy cheek, a bright eye, a well-knit frame, an immense 
hand, a cheery out-speaking voice, and a straight, bright, 
broad look. He had a drawing-room, too, up stairs, 
winch was worth t\ visit to the Cumberland Fells. (This 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


173 


was Mr. Francis Goodcliild’s opinion, in which Mr. 
Thomas Idle did not concur.) 

The ceiling of this drawing-room was so crossed and 
recrossed by beams of unequal length, radiating from a 
centre in a corner, that it looked like a broken star fish. 
The room was comfortably and solidly furnished with 
good mahogany and horsehair. It had a snug fireside, and 
couple of well-curtained windows, looking out upon the 
wild country behind the house. What it most developed 
was an unexpected taste for little ornaments and nick- 
nacks, of which it contained a most surprising number. 
They were not very various, consisting in great part of 
waxen babies with their limbs more or less mutilated, a])- 
pealing on one leg to the parental affections from under 
little cupping-glasses ; but Uncle Tom was there, in 
crockery, receiving theological instructions from Miss 
Eva, who grew out of his side like a wen, in an exceed- 
ingly rough state of profile propagandism. Engravings 
of Mr. Hunt’s country boy, before and after his pie, were 
on the wall, divided by a highly-colored nautical piece, 
the subject of which had all her colors (and more) flying, 
and was making a great way through a sea of a regular 
pattern, like a lady’s collar. A benevolent elderly gentle- 
man of the last century, with a powdered head, kept guard, 
in oil and varnish, over a most perplexing piece of furni- 
ture on a table, in appearance between a driving-seat and 
angular knife box, but, when opened, a musical instrument 
of tinkling wires, exactly like David’s harp packed for 
travelling. Everything became a nicknack in this curious 
room. The copper tea-kettle, burnished up to the high- 
est point of glory, took his station on a stand of his own 
greatest possible distance from the fireplace, and said, 
“ By yonr leave, not a kettle, but a bijou.” The Stafford- 
shire-ware butter-dish with the cover on, got upon a little 
round occasional table in a window, with a worked lop, 


174 


THE LAZY TOLR OF 


and announced itself to the two cliairs accidentally placed 
there, as an aid to polite conversation, a graceful trifle in 
china to be chatted over by chillers, as they airily trifled 
away the visiting moments of a butterfly existence, in that 
rugged old village on the Cumberland Fells. The very 
foot stool could not keep the floor, but got upon the sofa, 
and therefrom proclaimed itself, in high relief of white 
and liver-colored wool, a favorite spaniel colled up for 
repose. Though, truly, in spite of its bright glass eyes, 
the spaniel was the least successful assumption in the col- 
lection, being perfectly flat, and dismally suggestive of a 
recent mistake in sitting down on the part of some cor- 
pulent member of the family. 

There were books, too, in this room ; books on the table, 
books on the chimney-piece, books in an open press in the 
corner. Fielding was there, and Smollet was there, and 
Steele and Addison were there, in dispersed volumes ; and 
there were tales of those who went down to the sea in 
ships, for windy nights ; and there was really a choice of 
good books for rainy days or fine. It was so very pleasant 
to see these things in such a lonesome by-place — so very 
agreeable to find these evidences of a taste, however home- 
ly, that went beyond the beautiful cleanliness and trimness 
of the house — so fanciful to imagine what a wonder the 
room must be to the little children born in the gloomy vil- 
lage — what grand impressions of it those of them who 
became wanderers over the earth would carry away ; and 
how, at distant ends of the world, some old voyagers 
would die, cherishing the belief that the finest apartment 
known to men was once in the Hesket-Newmarket Inn, 
in rare old Cumberland — it was such a charmingly lazy 
pursuit to entertain these rambling thoughts over the choice 
oat-cake and the genial whisky, that Mr. Idle and Mr. 
Goodchild never asked themselves how it came to pass 
that the men in the fields were never heard of more, how 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


175 


the stalwart landlord replaced them without explanation^ 
how his dog-cart came to be waiting at the door, and how 
every thing was arranged without the least arrangement, 
for climbing to old Carrock^s shoulders, and standing on 
his head. 

Without a word of inquiry, therefore, The Two Idle 
Apprentices drifted out resignedly into a fine, soft, close, 
drowsy, penetrating rain ; got into the landlord’s light dog- 
cart, and rattled off, through the village, for the foot of 
Carrock. The journey at the outset was not remarkable. 
The Cumberland road went up and down like other roads ; 
the Cumberland curs burst out from backs of cottages and 
barked like other curs, and the Cumberland peasantry star- 
ed after the dog-cart amazedly, as long as it was in sight, 
like the rest of their race. The approach to the foot of 
the mountain resembled the approaches to the feet of most 
other mountains all over the world. The cultivation 
gradually ceased, the trees grew gradually rare, the road be 
came gradually rougher, and the sides of the mountain looked 
gradually more and more lofty, and more and more diffi- 
cult to get up. The dog-cart was left at a lonely farmhouse. 
The landlord borrowed a large umbrella, and, assuming in 
an instant the character of the most cheerful and adven- 
turous of guides, led the way to the ascent. Mr. Goodcliild 
looked eagerly at the top of the mountain, and feeling ap- 
parently that fie was now going to be very lazy indeed, 
shone all over wonderfully to the eye, under the influence of 
the contentment within and moisture without. Only in the 
bosom of Mr. Thomas Idle did Despondency now hold her 
gloomy state. He kept it a secret ; but he would have 
given a very handsome sum, when the ascent began, to 
have been back again at the inn. The sides of Carrock 
looked fearfully steep, and the top of Carrock was hidden 
in mist. The rain was falling faster and faster. Tb<3 
knees of Mr. Idle — always weak on walking excursions 


176 


THE LAZr TOUK OF 


— shivered and shook with fear and damp. The wet was 
already penetrating thi'ough the young man’s outer coat 
to a bran new shoo ting- jacket, for which he had reluctantly 
paid the large sum of two guineas on leaving town ; he 
had no stimulating refreshment about him but a small 
packet of clammy gingerbread nuts ; he had nobody to 
give him an arm, nobody to push him gently behind, nobody 
to pull him up tenderly in front, nobody to speak to who 
really felt the difficulties of the ascent, the dampness of 
the rain, the denseness of the mist, and the unutterable 
folly of climbing, undriven, up any steep place in the 
world, when there is a level ground within reach to halt on 
instead. Was it for this that Thomas had left London ? Lon- 
don, where there are nice short walks in level public gardens, 
with benches of repose set up at convenient distances for 
weary travellers — London, where rugged stone is humanely 
pounded into little lumps for the road and intelligently shap- 
ed into smooth slabs for the pavement ! No ! it was not for 
the laborious ascent of the crags of Carrock that Idle had 
left his native city and traveled to Cumberland. Nevei’ did 
he feel more disastrously convinced that he had committed 
a very grave error in judgment than when he found himself 
standing in the rain at the bottom of a steep mountain, 
and knew that the responsibility rested on his weak slioul- 
ders of actually getting to the top of it. 

The honest landlord went first, the beaming Goodchild 
followed, the mournful Idle brought up the rear. From 
lime to. time, the two foremost members of the expedition 
changed places ir :he order of march ; but the rear-guard 
never altered his position. Up the mountain or down the 
mountain, in the water or out of it, over the rocks, through 
the bogs, skirting the heather, Mr. Thomas Idle was always 
the last, and was always the man who had to be looked 
after and waited for. At first, the ascent was delusively 
easy : the sides of the mountain sloped gradually, and 


TWO IDLE APrUENTlCES. 


177 


the material of wliich they were composed was a soft spongy 
turf, very tender and pleasant to walk upon. After a 
hundred yards or so, however,. the verdant scene and the 
easy slope disappeared, and the rocks began. Not noble 
massive rocks, standing upright, keeping a certain regu- 
larity in their positions, and possessing, now and then, fiat 
tops to sit upon, but little, irritating, comfortless rocks, 
littered about anyhow by nature ; treacherous, dishearten- 
ing rocks of all sorts of small shapes and small sizes, bruis- 
ers of tender toes and trippers-up of wavering feet. When 
these impediments were passed, heather and slough fol- 
lowed. Here the steepness of the ascent was slightly 
mitigated ; and here the exploring party of three turned 
round to look at the view below them. The scene of the 
moorland and the fields were like a feeble water-color 
drawing half-sponged out. The mist was darkening, tlie 
rain was thickening, the trees were dotted about like spots 
of faint shadow, the division-lines which mapped out tlie 
fields were all getting blurred together, and the lonely farm- 
house, where the dog-cart had been left, loomed spectral 
in the gray light, like the last human dwelling at the end 
of the habitable world. Was this a sight worth climbing 
to see ? Surely — surely not ! 

Up again, for the top of Carrock is not reached yet. 
The landlord, just as good-tempered and obliging as her 
was at the bottom of the mountain ; Mr. Goodcliild, brighter 
in the eyes and rosier in the face than ever, full of cheeiv 
ful remarks and apt quotations, and walking with a spring- 
iness of step wonderful to behold ; Mr. Idle, farther and 
farther in the rear, with the water squeaking in the toes 
of his boots, and his two-guinea shooting-jacket clinging 
damply to his aching sides, with his overcoat so full of rain 
and standing out so pyramidically stiff in consequence 
from his shoulders downward, that he felt as if he was 
walking in a gigantic extinguisher — the despairing spirit 


178 



THE LAZY TOUR OP 


within him Representing but too aptly the canale that had 
just been put out. Up and up, and up again, till a ridge 
is reached, and the outer edge of the mist on the summit 
of Carrock is darkly and drizzlingly near. Is this the 
top ? No, nothing like the top. It is an aggravating pe- 
culiarity of all mountains that, although they have only 
one tQp when they are seen (as they ought always to be 
seen) from below, they turn out to have a perfect eruption 
of false tops whenever the traveller is sufficiently ill-advis- 
ed to go out of his way for the purpose of ascending them. 
Carrock is but a trumpery little mountain of fifteen hun- 
dred feet, and it presumes to have false tops, and even pre- 
cipices, as if it was Mount Blanc. No matter ; Goodchild 
enjoys it, and will go on ; and Idle, who is afraid to be 
left behind by himself, must follow. On entering the edge 
of the mist, the landlord stops, and says that he hopes it will 
not get any thicker. It is twenty years since he last ascend- 
ed Carrock, and it is barely possible, if the mist increases, 
that the party may be lost on the mountain. Goodchild 
hears this dreadful intimation, and is not in the least im- 
pressed by it. He marches for the top that is never to be ^ 
found, as if he was the Wandering Jew, bound to go on 
forever, in defiance of everything. The landlord faith- 
fully accompanies him. The two, to the dim eye of Idle, 
far below, look, in the exaggerative mist, like a pair of 
friendly giants mounting the steps of some invisible castle 
together. Up and up, and then down a little, and then 
up, and then along a strip of level ground, and then up 
again. The wind — a wind unknown in the happy valley 
— blows keen and strong ; the rain mist gets impenetrable ; 
a dreary little cairn of stones appears. The landlord adds 
one to the heap, first walking all round the cairn, as if he 
were about to perform an incantation, then dropping the 
stone on to the top of the heap, with the gesture of a 
magician adding an ingredient to a caldron in full bubble. 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


179 


Goodchild sits down by the cairn, as if it was his study-table 
at home ; Idle, drenched and jDanting, stands up with his 
back to the wind, ascertains distinctly that this is the top 
at last, looks round with all the little curiosity that is left 
in him, and gets in return a magnificent view of — Nothing ! 

The effect of this sublime spectacle on the minds, of the 
, exploring party is a little injured by the nature of the di- 
rect conclusion to which the sight of it points — the said 
conclusion being that the mountain mist has actually gath* 
ered round them as the landlord feared it would. It now 
becomes imperatively necessary to settle the exact situa- 
tion of the farm-house in the valley at which the dog-cart 
has been left, before the travelers attempt to descend. 
While the landlord is endeavoring to make this discovery 
in his own way, Mr. Goodchild plunges his hand under his 
•wet coat, draws out a little red morocco case, opens it, and 
displays to the view of his companions a new pocket- 
compass. The north is found, the point at which the farm- 
house is situated is settled, ^d the descent begins. After 
a little downward walking. Idle (behind, as Usual) sees 
his fellow-travelers turn aside sharply — tries to follow 
them — closes them in the mist — is shouted after, waited 
for, recovered — and then finds that a halt has been order- 
ed, partly on his account, partly for the purpose of again 
consulting the compass. 

The point in debate is settled, as before, between Goodh 
child and the landlord, and the expedition moves on, not 
down the mountain, but marching straight forward round 
the slope of it. The difiiculty of following this new route 
is acutely felt by Thomas Idle. He finds the hardship of 
walking at all greatly increased by the fatigue of moving 
his feet straight forward along the side of a sloj)e, when 
their natural tendency, at every step, is to turn, off at a 
right-angle, and go straight down the declivity. Let the 
reader imagine himself to be walking along the roof of a 


180 


THE LAZY TOUR OP 


barn, instead of up or down it, and he will have an exact 
idea of the pedestrian difficulty in which the travellers had 
now involved themselves. In ten minutes more Idle was 
lost in the distance again, was shouted for, waited for, re- 
covered as before ; found Goodchild repeating his obser- 
vation. of the compass, and remonstrated warmly against 
the sideway route that his companions persisted in follow- 
ing. It appeared to the uninstructed mind of Thomas, 
that when three men wanted to get to the bottom of a 
mountain, their business is to walk down it ; and he put 
this view of the case, not only with emphasis, but even 
with some irritability. He was answered, from the scien- 
tific eminence of the compass on which his companions 
were mounted, that there was a frightful chasm some- 
where near the foot of Carrock, called The Black Arches, 
into which the travelers were sure to march in the mist, 
if they risked continuing the descent from the place where 
they had now halted. Idle received this answer with the 
silent respect which was due to the commanders of the 
expedition, and followed along the roof of the barn, or 
rather the side of the mountain, reflecting upon the assur- 
ance which he received on starting again, that the object 
of the party was only to gain “ a certain point,’’ and, this 
haven attained, to continue the descent afterward until 
the foot of Carrock was reached. Though quite unexcep- 
tionable, as an abstract form of expression, the phrase “ a 
certain point” has the disadvantage of sounding rather 
vaguely when it is pronounced on unknown ground, un- 
der a canopy of mist much thicker than a London fog. 
Nevertheless, after the compass,^ this phrase was all the 
clue the party had to hold by, and Idle clung to the ex- 
treme end of it as hopefully as he could. 

More . sideway walking, thicker and thicker mist, all 
sorts of points reached except the “ certain point ; ” third 
loss of Idle, third shouts for him, third recovery of liiir., 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


181 


third consultation of compass. Mr. Goodchild draws it 
tenderly from his pocket, and prepares to adjust it on a 
stone. Something falls on the turf — it is' the glass. Some- 
thing else drops immediately after — it is the needle. The 
compass is broken, and the exploring party is lost ! 

It is the practice of the English portion of the human 
race to receive all great disasters in dead silence. Mr. 
Goodchild restored the useless compass to his pocket with- 
out saying a word ; Mr. Idle looked at the landlord, and 
the landlord looked at Mr. Idle. There was nothing for 
it now but to go on blindfold, and trust to the chapter of 
chances. Accordingly, the lost travelers moved forward, 
still walking round the slope of the mountain, still des- 
perately resolved to avoid the Black Arches, and to suc- 
ceed in reaching the certain point.” 

A quarter of an hour brought them to the brink of a 
ravine, at the bottom of which there flowed a muddy little 
stream. Here another halt was called, and another con- 
sultation took place. The landlord, still clinging pertina- 
ciously to the idea of reaching the “ point,” voted for 
crossing the ravine and going on round the slope of the 
mountain. Mr. Goodchild, to the great relief of his fellow- 
traveller, took another view of the case, and backed Mr. 
Idle’s proposal to descend Carrock at once, at any hazard 
— the rather as the running stream was a sure guide to 
follow from the mountain to the valley. Accordingly, 
the party descended to the rugged and stony banks of the 
stream ; and here, again, Thomas lost ground sadly, and 
fell far behind his traveling companions. Not much more 
than six weeks had elapsed, since he had sprained one of 
his ankles, and he began to feel this same ankle getting 
rather weak when he found himself among the stones that 
were strewn about the running water. Goodchild and the 
landlord were getting farther and farther ahead of him. 
Ho saw them cross the stream and disappear round a 


182 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


projection on its banks. He heard them shout the mo- 
ment after, as a signal that they had halted and were 
waiting for him. Answering the shout, lie mended his 
pace, crossed the stream where they had crossed it, and was 
within one step of the opposite bank, when Ids foot slip- 
ped on a wet stone, his weak ankle gave a twist outward, 
a hot, rending, tearing pain ran through it at the same 
moment, and down fell the idlest of the Two Idle Appren- 
tices, crippled in an instant. 

The situation was now, in plain terms, one of absolute 
danger. There lay Mr. Idle writhing with pain ; tliere 
was the mist as thick as ever ; there was the landlord as 
completely lost as the strangers whom he was conducting; 
and there was the compass broken in Goodchild’s pocket. 
To leave the wretched Thomas on unknown ground, was 
plainly impossible ; and to get him to walk with a badly 
sprained ankle seemed equally out of the question. How- 
ever, Goodchild (brought back by his cry for help) band- 
aged the ankle with a pocket-handkerchief and, assisted by 
the landlord, raised the cripple Apprentice to liis legs, 
offered him a slioulder to lean on, and exhorted him, for 
the sake of the whole party, to tiy if he could walk. 
Thomas, assisted by the shoulder on one side and a stick 
on the other, did try, with what pain and difficulty, those 
only can imagine who have sprained an ankle and have 
had to tread on it afterward. At a pace adapted to the 
feeble hobbling of a newly-lamed man, the lost party 
moved on, perfectly ignorant whether they were on the 
right side of the mountain or the wrong, and equally un- 
certain how long Idle would be able to contend with the 
pain in his ankle, before he gave in altogether and fell 
down again, unable to stir another step. 

Slowly and more slowly, as the clog of crippled Thomas 
weighed heavily and more heavily on the march of the 
expedition, the lost travelers followed the windings of the 


TWO IDLE ATPRENTICES. 


183 


stream, till they came to a faintly-marked cart-track, 
branching oif nearly at right angles to the left. After a lit- 
tle consultation, it was resolved to follow this dim vestige 
of a road in the hope that it might lead to some farm or 
cottage, at which Idle could be left in safety. It was 
- now getting on toward the afternoon, and it was fast 
becoming doubtful whether the party, delayed in their 
progress as they now were, might not be overtaken by 
the darkness before the right route was found, and be 
condemned to pass the night on the mountain, without bit 
or drop to comfort them, in their wet clothes. 

The cart-track grew fainter and fainter, until it was 
washed out altogether by another little stream, dark, tur- 
bulent, and rapid. The landlord suggested, judging by 
the color of the water, that it must be flowing from one .of 
the lead mines in the neighborhood of Carrock ; and the 
travelers, accordingly, kept by the stream for a little while 
in the hope of possibly wandering toward help in that 
way. After walking forward about two hundred yards, 
they came upon a mine indeed, but a mine exhausted and 
abandoned — a dismal, ruinous place, with nothing but the 
wreck of its works and buildings left to speak for it. Here 
there were a few sheep feeding. The landlord looked at 
them earnestly, thought he recognized the marks on 
• them — then thought he did not — finally gave up the sheep 
in despair, and walked on, just as ignorant of the where- 
abouts of the party as ever. 

The march in the dark, literally as well as metaphori- 
cally in the dark, had now been continued for three- 
quarters of an hour from the time when the crippled 
Apprentice had met with his accident. Mr. Idle, with all 
the will to conquer the pain in his ankle, and to hobble 
on, found the power rapidly failing him, and felt that 
another ten minutes at most, would find him at the end of 
his last physical resources. He had just made up his mind 

8 * 

, • 

I 


184 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


on this point, and was about to communicate the dismal 
result of his reflections to his companions, when the mist 
suddenly brightened and began to lift straight ahead. In 
another minute, the landlord, who was in advance, pro- 
claimed that he saw a tree. Before long other trees 
appeared — then a cottage — then a house beyond the cot- 
tage, and a familiar line of road rising behind it. Last 
of all, Carrock itself loomed darkly into view, far away 
to the right hand. The party had not only got down the 
mountain without knowing how, but had wandered away 
from it in the mist without knowing why — away, far 
down on the very moor by which they had approached 
the base of Carrock that morning. 

The happy lifting of the mist, and the still happier dis- 
covery that the travelers had groped their way, though 
by a very roundabout direction, to within a mile or so of 
the part of the valley in which the farm-house was situat- 
ed, restored Mr. Idle’s sinking spirits and reanimated his 
failing strength. While- the landlord ran off to get the 
dog-cart, Thomas was assisted by Goodchild to the cottage 
which had been tlie first building seen when the darkness 
brightened, and was propped up against the garden-wall, 
like an artist’s lay-figure waiting to be forwarded, until 
the dog-cart should arj ive from the farm-house below. In 
due time — and a very long . time it seemed to Mr. Idle — • 
the rattle of wheels was heard, and the crippled Appren- 
tice was lifted into his seat. As the dog-cart was driven 
back to tHc inn, the landlord related an anecdote which 
he had just heard at the farm-house, of an unhappy man 
who had been lost, like his two guests and himself, on 
Carrock ; who had passed the niglit there alone ; wlm 
had been found the next morning, scared and starved,” 
and who never went out afterward except on his way to 
the grave. Mr. Idle heard this sad story, and derived at 
least one useful impression from it. Bad as the pain in 




TOO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


185 


his ankle was, he contrived to bear it patiently, for he felt 
grateful that a worse accident had not befallen him in 
the wilds of Carrock. 


186 


THE LAZI TOUR OF 


CHAPTER THE SECOND. 

The dog-cart, with Mr. Thomas Idle and his ankle on 
the hanging seat behind, Mr. Francis Goodchih^ and the 
Innkeeper in front, and the rain in spouts and splashes 
everywhere, made the best of its way back to the little 
Inn ; the broken moor country looking like miles upon 
miles of pre- Adamite sop, or the ruins of some enormous 
jorum of antediluvian toast-and-water. The trees drip- 
ped ; the eaves of the scattered cottages dripped ; the 
barren stone- walls dividing the land dripped ; the yelping 
dogs dripped ; carts and wagons under ill-roofed pent- 
houses dripped ; melancholy cocks and hens perching 
on their shafts, or seeking shelter underneath them drip- 
ped ; Mr. Goodchild dripped ; Francis Idle dripped; the 
Innkeeper dripped ; the mare dripped ; the vast curtains 
of mist and cloud that passed before the shadowy forms 
of the hills streamed water as they were drawn across the 
landscape. Down such steep pitches that the mare seem- 
ed to be trotting on her head, and up such steep pitches 
that she seemed to have a supplementary leg in her tail, 
the dog-cart jolted and tilted back to the village. It was 
too wet for the women to look out, it was too wet even 
for the children to look out; all the doors and windows 
were closed, and the only sign of life or motion was in 
the rain-punctured ptiddles. 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


187 


Whisky and oil to Thomas Idle’s ankle, and whiskey 
without oil to Francis Goodchild’s stomach, produced an 
agreeable change in the systems of both : soothing Mr, 
Idle's pain, which was sharp before, and sweetening Mr. 
Goodchild’s temper, which was sweet before. Portman- 
teaus being then opened and clothes changed, Mr. Good- 
child, through having no change of outer garments but 
broadcloth and velvet, suddenly became a magnificent por- 
tent in the Innkeeper’s house, a shining frontispiece to 
the Fashions for the Month, and a frightful anomaly in 
the Cumberland village. 

Greatly ashamed of his splendid appearance, the con- 
scious Goodchild quenched it as much as possible, in the 
shadow of Thomas Idle’s, ankle, and in a corner of the 
little covered. ' carriage that started with them for Wigton 
— ^ nibst desirable carriage for any country, except for 
' having a fiat roof and no sides ; which caused the 
blumps of rain accumulating on the roof to play vigorous 
games of bagatelle into the interior all the way, and to 
j score immensely. It was comfortable to see how the 
! people coming back in open carts from Wigton market 
i made no more of the rain than if it were sunshine ; how 
' the Wigton policeman, taking a country walk of half-a- 
dozen miles (apparently for pleasure) in resplendent 
uniform, accepted saturation as his normal state ; how 
j clerks and schoolmasters in black, loitered along the road 
1 without umbrellas, getting varnished at every step ; how 
the Cumberland girls, coming out to look after the Cum- 
berland cows, shook the rain from their eyelashes and 
laughed it away ; and how the rain continued to fall upon 
all, as it only does fall in hill countries. 

Wigton market was over, and its bare booths were 
smoking with rain all down the street. Mr. Tliomas Idle, 
melo-dramatically carried to tlie Tun’s first-floor, and laid 
upon three chairs (he should have had the sofa, if there 


188 


THE LA.ZY TOUR OF 


had been one), Mr. Goodchild went to the window to take 
an observation of Wigton, and report wliat he' saw to his 
disabled companion. 

“ Brother Francis, brother Francis,’’ cried Thomas Idle, 
“ what do you see from the turret ? ” 

‘‘ I see,” said Brother Francis, “ what I hope and 
believe to be one of the most dismal places ever seen by 
eyes. I see the houses witli their roofs of dull black, 
their stained fronts, and their dark-rimmed windows, look- 
ing as if they were all in mourning. As every little puff 
of wind comes down the street, I see a perfect train of 
rain let off along the wooden stalls in the market-place 
and exploded against me. I see. a very big gas-lamp in 
the centre which I know, by a secret instinct, will not be 
lighted to-night. I see a pump, with a trivet.underneath 
its spout whereon to stand the vessels that are brought to 
be filled with water. I see a man come to pump, and he 
pumps very hard, but no water follows and he stroll,8 
empty away.” 

‘‘ Brother Francis, brother Francis,” cried Thomas 
Idle, what more do you see from the turret, besides the 
man and the pump, and the trivet and the houses all in 
mourning and the rain ? ” 

“I see,” said Brother Francis “ one, two, three, four, 
five linen-drapers’ shops in front of me. I see a linen- 
draper’s shop next door to the right — and there are five 
more linen-drapers’ shops down the corner to the left. 
Eleven homicidal linen-drapers’ shops within a short 
stone’s throw, each with its hands at the throats of all 
the rest ! Over the small first-fioor of one of these linen- 
drapers’ shops appears the wonderful inscription, Ba.nk.” 

Brother Francis, brother Francis,” cried Thomas 
Idle, “ what more do you see from the turret, besides the 
eleven homicidal linen-dra]>ers’ shops, and the wonderful 
inscription ‘Bank’ on the small first-fioor, and the man 


TWO IDLE ArPRKNTICES. 


189 


and the pump and the trivet and the houses all in mourning 
and the rain ? ’’ 

“I see” said Brother Francis, “the depository for 
Christian Knowledge, and through the dark vapor I think 
I again make out Mr. Spurgeon looming heavily. Her 
Majesty the Queen, God bless her, printed in colors, I 
am sure I see. I see the Illustrated London News of 
several weeks a,go, and I see a sweetmeat shop — which 
the proprietor calls a ‘ Salt Warehouse/ — with one small 
female child in a cotton bonnet looking in on tip-toe, 
oblivious of rain. And I see a watchmaker’s, with only 
three great pale watches of a dull metal hanging in his 
window, each in a separate pane.’’ 

“ Brother Francis, brother Francis,” cried Thomas Idle, 
“what more do you see of Wigton, besides these objects 
and the man and the pump and the trivet and the houses 
all in mourning and the rain ? ” 

“ I see nothing more,” said Brother Francis, “ and there 
is nothing more to see, except the curlpaper bill of the 
theatre, which was opened and shut last week (the manager’s 
family played all the parts) and the short, square, chinky 
omnibus that goes to the railway and leads too rattling a 
life over the stones to hold together long. Oh, yes ! Now, 
I see two men with their hands in their pockets and their 
back towards me.” 

“ Brother Francis, brother Francis,” cried Thomas Idle, 
“ what do you make out from the turret,- of the expres- 
sion of the two men with their hands in their pockets and 
their backs towards you ? ” 

“They are mysterious men,” said brother. Francis, 
“ with inscrutable backs. They keep their backs towards 
me with persistency. If one turns an inch in any direc- 
tion, the other turns an inch in the same direction, 
and no more. They turn very stiffly, on a very lit- 
tle pivotj in the middle of the market-place. Their ap- 


190 


THE LA.ZT TOUR OF 


pearance is partly of a mining, partly of a ploughing, 
partly of a stable, character. They are looking at no- 
thing — ^very hard. Their backs are slouched, and their 
legs are curved with much standing about. Their pock- 
ets are loose and dog’s-eared, on account of their hands 
being always in them. They stand to be rained upon, 
without any movement of impatience or dissatisfaction, 
and they keep so close together that mi elbow of each 
jostles an elbow of the other, but they never speak. They 
spit at times, but speak not. I see it growing darker 
and darker, and still I see them, sole visible population 
of the place, standing to be rained upon with their backs 
towards me, and looking at nothing very hard.” 

“ Brother Francis, brother Francis,” cried Thomas Idle 
before you draw down the blind of the turret and come 
in to have your head scorched by the hot gas, if you can, 
and impart to me, something of the expression of those 
two amazing men.” 

‘^The murky shadows,” said Francis Goodchild, “are 
gathering fast ; and the wings of coal are folding over 
Wigton. Still, they look at nothing very hard, with 
their backs towards me. Ah ! Now, they turn, and I 
see — ” 

“ Brother Francis,” cried Thomas Idle, “ tell me quick- 
ly what you see of the two men of Wigton ! ” 

“ I see,” said Francis Goodchild, “ that they have no 
expression at all. And now the town goes to sleep, un- 
dazzled by the large unlighted lamp in the market-place ; 
and let no man wake it.” 

At the close of the next day’s journey, Thomas Idle’s 
ankle became much swollen and inflamed. There are rea- 
sons which will presently explain themselves, for not 
publicly indicating the exact direction in which that journey 
lay, or the place in whick nided. It was a long day's 
shaking ot x'homas Idle over the rough roads, and a long 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


191 


day’s getting out and going on before the horses, and fag- 
ging up hills, and scouring down hills, on tlie part of Mr 
Goodchild, who in the fatigues of such labors congratulated 
himself on attaining a high point of idleness. It was at a 
little town, still in Cumberland, that they halted for the 
night, — a very little town, with the purple and brown moor 
close upon its one street ; a curious little ancient market, 
cross set up in the midst of it : and the town itself looking- 
much as if it were a collection of great stones piled on by 
the Druids long ago, which a few recluse people had since 
hollowed out for habitations. 

“Is there any doctor here? ’’asked Mr. Goodchild, 
on his knee, of the motherly landlady of the little Inn, 
stopping in his examination of Mr. Idle’s ankle, with the 
aid of a candle. 

“ Ey, my word ! ” said the landlady, glancing doubt- 
fully at the ankle for herself ; “ there’s Doctor Speddie.” 

“ Is he a good Doctor ? ” 

“ Ey ! ” said the landlady, “ I ca’ him so. . A’ cooms 
efther nae doctor that I ken. Mair nor which, a’s just the 
doctor heer.” 

“ Do you think he is at home ?” 

Her reply was, “ Gang awa’, Jock, and bring him.’' 

Jock, a white-headed boy, who, under pretence of stir- 
ring up some bay salt in a basin of water for the laving 
of this unfortunate ankle, had greatly enjoyed himself for 
the last ten minutes in splashing the carpet, set off 
promptly. A very few minutes had elapsed when 
he showed the Doctor in, by tumbling against the door 
before him and bursting it open with his head. 

“ Gently, Jock; gently,” said the doctor as he advanc- 
ed with a quiet step. “ Gentlemen, a good evening. I 
am sorry that my presence is required here. A slight ac- 
cident, I hope ? A slip and a fall ? Yes, yes, yes. Carrock, 
ndeed ? Ha ! Does that pain you, sir ? No doubt it 

9 


192 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


does. It is the great connecting ligament here, you see, that 
has been badly strained. Time and rest, sir ! They are 
often the receipt in greater cases,” witli a slight sigh ; 
“ and often the recipe in small. I can send a lotion to 
relieve you, but we must leave the cure to time and rest.” 

This he said holding Idlers foot on his knee between 
his two hands, as he sat over against him. He had touch- 
ed it tenderly and skilfully in explanation of what he said, 
and, when his careful examination was completed, softly 
returned it to its former horizontal position on the chair. 

He spoke with a little irresolution whenever he began, 
but afterwards fluently. He was a tall, thin, large-boned, 
old gentleman, with an appearance at first sight of being 
hard-featured ; but at a second glance, the mild expression 
of his face and some particular touches of sweetness and 
patience about his mouth, corrected this impression, and 
assigned his long professional rides, by day and night, in 
the bleak-hill-weather, as the true cause of that appear- 
ance. He stooped very little, though past seventy and 
very grey. His dress was more like that of a clergyman 
than a country doctor, being a plain black suit, and a 
plain white neckerchief tied behind like a band. His 
black was the worse for wear, and there were darns in his 
coat, and his linen was a little frayed at the hems and 
edges. He might have been poor — it was 1 ikely enough 
in that out-of-the-way spot — or he might have been a lit- 
tle self-forgetful and eccentric. Any one could have seen 
directly, that he had neither wife nor child at home. He 
had a scholarly air with him, and that kind of considerate 
humanity towards others which claimed a gentle consid- 
eration for himself. Mr. Goodchild made this study of 
him while he was examining the limb, and as he laid it 
down. Mr. Goodchild wishes to add that he considers it 
a very good likeness. 

It came out in the course of a little conversation, that 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


193 


Doctor Spedclie was acquainted with some friends of 
Thomas Idle’s, and had, when a young man, passed some 
years in Thomas Idle’s birthplace on the other side of 
England Certain idle labors, the fruit of Mr. Goodchild’s 
ai^prenticeship, also happened to be well known to him. 
■ The lazy travellers were thus placed on a more intimate 
footing with the Doctor than the casual circumstances of 
the meeting would of themselves have established ; and 
when Doctor Speddie rose to go home, remarking that he 
would send his assistant with the lotion, Francis Goodchild 
said that was unnecessary, for, by the Doctor’s leave, he 
would accompany him, and bring it back. (Having done 
nothing to fatigue himself for a full quarter of an hour, 
Francis began to fear that he was not in a state of idleness.) 

Doctor Speddie politely assented to the proposition of 
Francis Goodchild, “ as it would give him the pleasure of 
enjoying a few more minutes of Mr. Goodchild’s society 
than he could otherwise have hoped for,” and they went 
out together into the village street. The rain had nearly 
ceased, the clouds had broken before a cool wind from the 
north-east, and stars were shining from the peaceful heights 
beyond them. 

Doctor Speddie’s house was the last house in the place. 
Beyond it lay the moor, all dark and lonesome. The wind 
moaned in a low, dull, shivering manner round the little 
garden, like a houseless creature, that knew the winter was 
coming. It was exceedingly wild and solitary. “ Roses,” 
said the Doctor, when Goodchild touched some wet leaves 
ovel’hanging the stone porch : “ but they get cut to 
pieces.” 

The Doctor opened the door with a key he carried, and 
led the way into a low but pretty ample hall with rooms 
on either side. The door of one of these stood open, and 
the Doctor entered it^ with a word of welcome to his 
guest. It, too, was a low room, half surgery and half 


194 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


parlor, with shelves of books and bottles against the walls, 
which were of a very dark hue. There was a fire in the 
grate, the night being damp and chill. Leaning against 
the chimney-piece looking down into it, stood the Doctor’s 
Assistant. 

A man of most remarkable appearance. Much older 
than Mr. Goodchild had expected, for he was at least 
two-and-fifty ; but that was nothing. What was start- 
ling in him was his remarkable .paleness. His large black 
eyes, his sunken cheeks, his long and heavy iron-grey 
hair, his wasted hands, and even the attenuation of his 
figure, were at first forgotten in his extraordinary pallor. 
There was no vestige of color in the man. When he 
turned his face, Francis Goodchild started as if a stone 
figure had looked round at him. 

Mr. Lorn,” said the Doctor. “ Mr. Goodchild.” 

The Assistant in a distraught way — as if he had forgot- 
ten something — as if he had forgotten everything, even to 
his own name and himself — acknowledged the visitor’s 
presence, and stepped farther back into the shadow of the 
wall behind him. But he was so pale, that his face stood 
out in relief against the dark wall, and really could not be 
hidden so. 

‘‘Mr. Goodchild’s friend has met with an accident, 
Lorn,” said Docto* Speddie. “ We want the lotion for a 
bad sprain.” 

A pause. 

“ My dear fellow, you are more than unusually absent 
to-night. The lotion for a bad sprain.” 

“ Ah ! yes ! Directly.” 

He was evidently relieved to turn away, and to take 
his white face and his wild eyes to a table in a recess among 
the bottles. But, though he stood there, compounding the 
lotion with his back towards them^ Goodchild could not 
for many moments withdraw his gaze from the man 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


195 


When he at length did so, he found the Doctor observing 
him, with some trouble in his face. “ He is absent,” ex- 
plained the Doctor, in a low voice. “Always absent. 
Very absent.” 

“Is he iU?” 

“ No, not ill.” 

“ Unhappy ? ” 

“ I have my suspicions that he was,” assented the Doc- 
tor, “ once.” 

Francis Goodchild could not but observe that the Doctor 
accompanied these words with a benignant and protecting 
glance at their subject, in which there was much of the 
expression with which an attached father might have look- 
ed at a heavily afflicted son. Yet, that they were not 
father and son must have been plain to most eyes. The 
Assistant, on the other hand, turning presently to ask the 
Doctor some question, looked at him with a wan smile, as 
if he were his whole reliance and sustainment in life. 

It was in vain for the Doctor, in his easy chair, to try 
to lead the mind of Mr. Goodchild in the opposite easy 
chair away from what was before him. Let Mr. Good- 
child do what he would to follow the Doctor, his eyes and 
thoughts reverted to the Assistant. The Doctor soon per- 
ceived it, and, after falling silent, and musing in a little 
perplexity, said : 

“ Lorn 

“ My dear Doctor.” 

“ Would you go to the Inn, and apply that lotion ? 
You will show the best way of applying it, far better than 
Mr. Goodchild can.” 

“ With pleasure.” 

The Assistant took his hat, and passed like a shadow 
to the door. 

“ Lorn !” said the Doctor, calling after him. 

He returned. 


196 


TIIK LAZT TOUR OF 


••Mr. Gooilcliild will keep me company till you come 
home. Don’t hurry. Excuse my calliiu^ you hack." 

•‘ It is not, said the Assistant with his former smile, 
“ the first time you have called me back, dear Doctor.’* 
With these words he wen', away. 

“ Mr. Goodchild,” said Doctor Speddie^ in a low voice, 
and with his former troubled expression of face, “ I 
have seen that your attention has been concentrated on 
my friend.” 

He fascinates me. I must apologise to you, but he 
has quite bewildered and mastered me.” 

“ I find that a lonely existence and a long secret,” said 
the Doctor, drawing his chair a • little nearer to Mr. 
Goodchild’s, “ become in the course of time very heavy. 
I will tell you something. You may make what use you 
will of it, under fictitious names. I know I may trust 
you. I am the more inclined to confidence to-night 
through having been unexpectedly led back, by the cur- 
rent of our conversation at the Inn, to the scenes in my 
early life. Will you please to draw a little nearer ? ” 

Mr. Goodchild drew a little nearer, and the Doctor 
went on thus : speaking, for the most part, in so cautious 
a voice, that the wind, though it was far from high, occa- 
sionally got the better of him. 

When the present nineteenth century was younger by 
a good many years than it is now, a certain friend of 
mine, named Arthur Holliday, happened to arrive in 
the town of Doncaster, exactly in the middle of the race- 
week, or, in other words, in the middle of the month of 
September. He was one of those reckless, rattle-pated, 
open-hearted, and open-mouthed young gentlemen wiio 
possess the gift of familiarity in its highest perfection, and 
who scramble carelessly along* the journey of life, mak- 
ing friends, as the phrase is, wherever they go. His 
father was a rich manufacturer, and had bought landed 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


197 


property enough in one of the midland counties to make 
all the born squires in his neighborhood thoroughly en- 
vious of him. Arthur was his only son, possessor in 
prospect of the great estate and the great business after 
his father’s death ; well supplied with money, and not too 
rigidly looked after during his father’s lifetime. Report, 
or scandal, whichever you please, said that the old gentle- 
man had been rather wild in his youthful days, and that, 
unlike most parents, he was not disposed to be violently 
indignant when he found that his son took after him. 
This may be true or not. I myself only knew the elder 
Mr, Holliday when he was getting on in years ; and 
then he was as quiet and as respectable a gentleman as 
ever I met with. 

Well, one September, as I told you, young Arthur 
comes to Doncaster, having decided all of a sudden, in 
his hair-brained way, that he would go to the races. He 
did not reach the town till towards the close of the even- 
ing, and he went at once to see about his dinner and bed 
at the principal hotel. Dinner they were ready enough 
to give him, but as for a bed, they laughed when he men- 
tioned it. In the race-week at Doncaster, it is no un- 
common thing for visitors who have not bespoken ap- 
partments to pass the night in their carriages at the inn 
doors. As for the lower sort of strangers, I myself have 
often seen them, at that full time, sleeping out under the 
doorsteps for want of a covered place to creep under. 
Rich as he was, Arthur’s chance of getting a night’s lodging 
(seing that he had not written beforehand to secure one) 
was more than doubtful* He tried the second hotel, and 
the third hotel, and two of the inferior inns after that ; 
and was met everywhere by the same form of answer. 
No accommodation for the night of any sort was left. 
All the bright golden sovereigns in his pocket would not 
buy liim a bed at Doncaster in the race-week. 


198 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


To a youDg fellow of Arthur’s temperament, tiie novel 
ty of being turned away into the street, like a penniless 
vagabond, at every house where he asked for a lodging, 
presented itself in the light of a new and highly amusing 
piece of experience. He went on with his carpet bag in 
his hand, applying for a bed at every place of entertain- 
ment for travellers that he could find in Doncaster, until 
he wandered into the outskirts of the town. By this 
time the last glimmer of twilight had faded out, the moon 
was rising dimly in a mist, the wind was getting cold, 
the clouds were gatheilng heavily, and there was every 
prospect that it was soon going to rain. 

The look of the night had rather a lowering effect on 
young Holliday’s good spirits. He began to contemplate 
the houseless situation in which he wa& placed, from the 
serious rather than the humorous point of view ; and he 
looked about him for another public-house to inquire at 
with something very like downright anxiety in his mind 
on the subject of a lodging for the night. The suburban 
part of the town towards which he now strayed was hard- 
ly lighted at all, and he could see nothing of the houses as 
he passed them, except that they got progressively smal- 
ler and dirtier the farther he went. Down the winding 
road before him, shone the dull gleam of an oil lamp, 
the one faint, lonely light that struggled ineffectually 
with the foggy darkness all round him. He resolved to 
go on as far as this lamp, and then, if it showed him noth- 
ing in the shape of an Inn, to return to the central part 
of the town and try if he could not at least secure a chair 
to sit down on, through the night, at one of the principal 
hotels. 

As he got near the lamp, he heard voices, and, walking 
close imder it, found that it lighted the entrance to a 
narrow court, on the wall of which was painted a long 
hand in faded flesh-color, pointing, with a lean fore-finger 
to this inscription : 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


199 


THE TWO ROBINS. 

Arthur turned into the court without hesitation, to see 
what The Two Robins could do for him. Four or five 
men were standing together round the door of the house, 
which was at the bottom of fhe court, facing the entrance 
from the street. The men were all listening to one other 
man, better dressed than the rest, who was telling his 
audience something in a low voice, in which they were 
apparently very much interested. 

On entering the passage Arthur was passed by, a 
stranger with a knapsack in his hand, who was evidently 
leaving the house. 

“ No,’’ said the traveller with the knapsack, turning 
round and addressing himself cheerfully to a fat, sly 
looking, bald-headed man, with a dirty white apron on? 
who had followed him down the passage. ‘‘ No, Mr. 
Landlord, I am not easily scared by trifles ; but, I don’t 
mind confessing that I can’t quite stand thatJ' 

It occurred to young Holliday, the moment he heard 
these words, that the stranger had been asked an exorbi- 
tant price for a bed at The Two Robins ; and that he 
was unable or unwilling to pay it. The moment his back 
was turned, Arthur, comfortably conscious of his own 
well-filled pockets, addressed himself in a great hurry, 
for fear any other benighted traveller should slip in and 
forestall him, to the sly-ldoking landlord with the dirty 
apron and the bald head. 

“ If you have got a bed to let,” said he, “ and if that 
gentleman who has just gone out won’t pay you your 
price for it, I will.” 

The sly landlord looked hard at Arthur. 

“ Will you. Sir ? ” he asked, in a meditative, dotibtluj 
way. 

“ Name your price,” said young Holliday, thinking 
that the landlord’s hesitation sprang from some boorish 


200 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


distrust of him. “ Name your price, and I’ll give you 
the money at once, if you like.” 

“ Are you game for live shillings ? ” inquired the land- 
lord, rubbing his stubby double chin, and looking up 
thoughtfully at the ceiling above him. 

Arthur nearly laughed in 'the man’s face ; but thinking 
it prudent to control himself, offered the five shillings as 
seriously as he could. The sly landlord held out his 
hand, then suddenly drew it back again. 

“ You’re acting all fair and above-board by me,” he 
said ; and before I take your money I’ll do the same 
by you. Look here, this is how it stands. You can 
have a bed all to yourself for five shillings ; but you can’t 
have more than a half-share of the room it stands in. 
Do you see what I mean, young gentleman ?” 

Of course I do,” returned Arthur, a little irritably. 
“You mean that it is a double-bedded room, and that one 
of the beds is occupied ? ” 

The landlord nodded his head and rubbed his double 
chin harder than ever. Arthur hesitated, and mechani- 
cally moved back a step or two towards the door. The 
idea of sleeping in the same room with a total stranger 
did not present an • attractive prospect to him. lie felt 
more than half inclined to drop his five shillings into his 
pocket and to go out into the street once more. 

“ Is it yes, or no ? ” asked the landlord. Settle it as 
quick as you can, because there’s lots of people wanting 
a bed at Doncasterdio-night besides you.” 

Arthur looked toward the court, and heard the rain 
falling heavily in the street outside. He thought lie 
would ask a question or two before he rashly decided on 
leaving the shelter of The Two Robins. 

“ What sort of a man is it who has got the other bed ? ” 
he inquired. “ Is he a gentleman ? I mean, is he a 
quiet, well-behaved person ? ” 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 201 

e 

“ The quietest man I ever came across,” said the land- 
lord, rubbing his fat hands stealthily one over the other. 

“ As sober as a judge, and as regular as clock-work in ' 
his habits. It hasn’t struck nine, not ten minutes ago, 
and he’s in bed already. I don’t know whether that 
comes up to your notion of a quiet man ; it goes a long 
way ahead of mine, I can tell you.” 

“ Is he asleep, do you think ? ” asked Arthur. 

“ I know he’s asleep,” returned the landlord. “ And 
what’s more, he’s gone off so fast that I’ll warrant you 
don’t wake him. This way. Sir,” said the landlord, 
speaking over young Holliday’s shoulder, as if he was 
add^ssing some new guest who was approaching the 
house. 

“ Here you are,” said Arthur, determined to be before- 
hand with the stranger, whoever he might be. “ I’ll take 
the bed.” And he handed the five shillings to the land- 
lord, who nodded, dropped the money carelessly into his 
waistcoat pocket, and lighted a candle. 

“ Come up and see the room,”- said the host of The 
Two Robins, leading the way to the staircase quite 
briskly, considering how fat he was. 

They mounted to the second floor of the house. The 
landlord half opened a door, fronting the landing, then 
stopped, and turned round to Arthur. 

“ It’s a fair bargain, mind, on my side as well as on 
yours,” he said. “ You give me five shillings, I give you 
in return a clean, comfortable bed ; and I warrant, before 
hand, that you won’t be interfered with or annoyed in 
any way by the man who sleeps in the same room with 
you.” Saying those words, he looked hard, for a mo- 
ment, in young Holliday’s face, and then led the way into 
the room. 

It was larger and cleaner than Arthur had expected it 
would be. The two beds stood parallel with each other 


202 


THE LAZY TOUK OF 


— a space of about six feet intervening between them. 
They were both of the same medium size, and both had 
‘ the same plain white curtains, made to draw, if necessary, 
all round them. The occupied bed was the bed nearest 
the window. The curtains were all drawn round this, 
except the half-curtain at the bottom, on the side of the 
bed farthest from the window. Arthur saw the feet of 
the sleeping man raising the scanty clothes into a sharp 
little eminence, as if he was lying flat on his back. He 
took the candle, and advanced softly to draw the curtain 
— stopped half way, and listened for a moment — then 
turned to the landlord. 

He is a very quiet sleeper,” said Arthur. ^ 

*‘Yes,” said the landlord, “very quiet.” 

Young Holliday advanced with the candle, and looked 
in at the man cautiously. 

“ How pale he is ! ” said Arthur. 

“ Yes,” returned the landlord, “ pale enough isn’t he ? ” 
Arthur looked closer at the man. The bed-clothes were 
drawn up to his chin, and they lay perfectly still over the 
region of the chest. Surpri^'^ and vaguely startled as he 
noticed this, Arthur stoop do jv c- closer to the stranger ; 
looked at his ashy, parted lipis listened breathlessly for 
an instant ; looked again at the strangely still face and 
the motionless lips and chest ; and turned round sud- 
denly on the landlord, witli his own cheeks as pale for the. 
moment, as the hollow cheeks of the man on the bed. 

“ Come here,” he whispered, under his breath. “ Com« 
here, for God’s sake ! The man’s not asleep — he is dead J ” 
“You have found that out sooner than I thought yov 
would,” said the landlord, composedly. “ Yes, he’s dead 
sure enough. He died at five o’clock to-day.” » 

“ How did he die ? Who is he ? ” asked Arthur, stag- 
gered, for the moment, by the audacious coolness of the 
answer. 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


203 


“ As to who he is,” rejoined the landlord, I know no 
more about him tlian you do. There are his books and 
letters and things, all sealed up in that brown paper par- 
cel, for the Coroner’s inquest to open to-morrow or next 
day. He’s been here a week, paying his way fairly 
enough, and stopping in-doors, for the most part, as if he 
was ailing. My girl brought him up his tea at five to- 
day, and as he was pouring of it out, he fell down in a 
faint, or a compound of both, for anything I know. We 
could not brino: him to — and I said he was dead. And 
the Doctor couldn’t bring him to — and the Doctor said he 
.was dead. And there he is. And the Coroner’s inquest 
coming as soon as it can. And that’s as much as I know 
about it.” 

Arthur held the candle close to the man’s lips. The 
flame still burned straight up, as steadily as ever. There 
was a moment of silence, and the rain pattered drearily 
through it against the panes of the window. 

If you haven’t got nothing more to say to me,” con- 
tinued the landlord, ‘‘ I suppose I may go. You don’t 
expect your five shillings back, do you? There’s the 
bed I promised you, clean and comfortable. There’s the 
man I warranted not to disturb you, quiet in this world 
forever. If you’re frightened to stop along with him, that’s 
not my look out. I’ve kept my part of the bargain, and I 
mean to keep the money. I’m not Yorkshire myself, young 
gentleman ; but I’ve lived long enough in these parts to 
have my wits sharpened; and I shouldn’t wonder if you 
found out the way to brighten up yours, next time you 
come among us.” With these words, the landlord turned 
towards the door, and laughed to himself softly, in high 
satisfaction at his own sharpness. 

Startled and shocked as he was, Arthur had by this 
time sufficiently recovered himself to feel indignant at the 
trick that had been played on him, and at the insolent 
manner in wliich the landlord exulted in it. 


204 


THE LAZT TOUR OF 


“ Don’t laugh,” he said, sharply, till you are quite 
sure you have got the laugh against me. You sha’n’t 
have the five shillings for nothing, my man. I’ll keep 
the bed.” 

“ Will you ? ” said the landlord. Then I wish you a 
good night’s rest.” With that brief farewell, he went 
out, and shut the door after him. 

A good night’s rest ! The words had hardly been spok- 
en, the door had hardly been closed, before Arthur half 
repented the hasty words that had just escaped him. 
Though not naturally over-sensitive, and not wanting in 
courage of the moral as well as the physical sort, the 
presence of the dead man had an instantaneously chilling 
effect on his mind when he found himself alone in the 
room — alone, and bound by his own rash words to stay 
there till the next morning. An older man would have 
thought nothing of those words, and would have acted 
without reference to them, as his calmer sense suggested. 
But Arthur was too young to treat the ridicule, even of 
his inferiors, with contempt — too young not to fear the 
momentary humiliation of falsifying his own foolish boast, 
more than he feared the trial of watching out the long 
night in the same chamber with the dead. 

“ It is but a few hours,” he thought to himself, “ and I 
can get away the first thing in the morning.” 

He was looking toward the occupied bed as that idea 
passed through his mind, and the sharp angular eminence 
made in the clothes by the dead man’s upturned feet again 
caught his eye. He advanced and drew the curtains, pur- 
posely abstaining, as he did so, from looking at the face 
of the corpse, lest he might unnerve himself at the outset 
by fastening some ghastly impression of it on his mind. 
He drew the curtain very gently, and sighed involuntarily 
as he closed it. ‘‘ Poor fellow !” he said, almost as sadly 
as if he had known the m?in. “ Ah, poor fellow 1” 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 20b 

Pie went next to the window. The night was black, 
and he could see nothing from it. The rain still pattcj’ed 
heavily against the glass. He inferred, from hearing it, 
that the window was at the back. of the house ; remcin« 
bering that the front was sheltered from the weather by 
the court and the buildings over it. 

While he was still standing at the window — for even the 
dreary rain was a relief, because of the sound it made ; a 
relief, also, because it moved, and had some faint sugges- 
tion, in consequence, of life and companionship in it — 
while he was standing at the window, and looking vacant- 
ly into the black darkness outside, he heard a distant 
church clock strike ten. Only ten ! How was he to pass 
the time, till the house was astir the next morning ? 

Under any other circumstances, he would have gone 
down to the public-house parlor, would have called for his 
grog, and would have laughed and talked with the com- 
pany assembled, as familiarly as if he had known them all 
his life. But the very thought of whiling away the time 
in this manner was now distasteful to him. The new 
situation in which he was placed seemed to have altered 
him to himself already. Thus far, his life had been the 
common, trifling, prosaic, surface life of a prosperous young 
man, with no troubles to conquer and no trials to face. 
He had lost no relation whom he loved, no friend whom 
he treasured. Till this night what share he had of the im- 
mortal inheritance that is divided among us all, had lain 
dormant within him. Till this night. Death ana he had 
not once met, even in thought. 

He took a few turns up and down the room — then 
stopped. The noise made by his boots on the poorly 
carpeted floor jarred on his ear. He he^irtated a little, 
and ended by taking the boots off and walking backward 
and forward noiselessly. All desire to sleep or to rest 
had left him. The bare thought of lying down on the 


,06 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


unoccupied bed instantly drew the picture on his mind of 
a dreadful mimicry of the position of the dead man. Who 
was he ? What was the story of his past life ? Poor he 
must have been, or he would not have stopped at such a 
place as The Two Robins Inn — amp weakened, probably, 
by long illness, or he could hardly have died in the man- 
ner which the landlord had described. Poor, ill, lonely — 
dead in a strange place ; dead,' with nobody but a stranger 
to pity him ! A sad story ; truly on the mere face of it, a 
very sad story. 

While these thoughts were passing through his mind, 
he had stopped insensibly at the window, close to which 
stood the foot of the bed with the closed curtains. At 
first he looked at it absently ; then he became conscious 
that his eyes were fixed on it ; and then, a perverse desire 
took possession of him to do the very thing which he had 
resolved not to do, up to this time — to look at the dead 
man. 

He stretched out his hand toward the curtains, but 
checked himself in the very act of undrawing them, turned 
his back sharply on the bed, and walked toward the 
chimney-piece, to see what things were placed on it, and 
to try if he could keep the dead man out of his mind in 
that way. 

There was a pewter inkstand on the chimney-piece, 
with some mildewed rem-ains of ink in the bottle. There 
were two coarse china ornaments of the commonest kind ; 
and there was a square of embossed card, dirty and fly- 
blown, with a collection of wretched riddles printed on it, 
in all sorts of zigzag directions, and in variously colored 
inks. He took the card, and went away to read it, to the 
table on which the candle was placed ; sitting down with 
his back resolutely turned to the curtained bed. 

He read the first riddle, the second, the third, all in one 
comer of the card — round patiently to look 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


207 


at another. — Before he could begin reading the riddles 
printed here, the sound of the church-clock stopped him. 
Eleven He had got thro^’gh an hour of the time, in the 
room witii the dead man. 

Once more, he looked at the card. It was not easy to 
make out the letters printed on it, in consequence of the 
dimness of the light which the landlord had left him — a 
• common tallow candle, furnished with heavy old-fashioned 
steel snuffers. Up to this time, his mind had been too 
much occupied to think of the light. He had left the 
wick of the candle unsnuffed, till it had risen higher than 
the flame, and had burned into an odd pent-house shape 
at the top, from which morsels of the charred cotton fell 
off, from time to time, in little flakes. He took up the 
snuffers now and trimmed the wick. The light brightened 
directly, and the room became less dismal. 

Again he turned to the riddles, reading them doggedly 
and resolutely, now in one corner of the card, now in 
another. All his efforts, however, could not fix his atten- 
tion on them. He pursued his occupation mechanically, 
deriving no sort of impression from what he was reading. 
It was as if a shadow from the curtained bed had got 
between his mind and the gayly printed letters — a shadow 
that nothing could dispel. At last, he gave up the s^'- ^Tgle 
vUid threw the card from him impatientb , and took to 
v/alking softly up and down the room again. 

The dead man, the dead man, the hidden dead man on 
the bed ! There was the one persistent idea still haunting 
him. Hidden ! Was it only the body being there, or was 
it the body being there, concealed, that was preying on 
his mind 1 He stopped at the window, with that doubt in 
him ; once more listening to the pattering rain, once 
more looking out into the black darkness. 

Still the dead man ! The darkness forcer; his mind back 

upon itself, and set his memor' % work, reviving, witl a 

9 ^ 


208 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


plainfully vivid distinctness the momentary impression it 
had received from his first sight of the corpse. Before 
long, the face seemed to be hovering out in the middle of 
the darkness, confronting him through the window, with 
the paleness whiter, with the dreadful dull line of light 
between the imperfectly-closed eyelids broader than he 
had seen it — with the parted lips slowly dropping farther 
and farther away from each other — with the features ^ 
growing larger and moving closer, till they seemed to fill 
the window and to silence the rain, and to shut out the 
night. 

The sound of a voice shouting below stairs woke him 
suddenly from the dream of his own distempered fancy. 

He recognized it as the voice of the landlord. “ Shut up 
at twelve, Ben,” he heard it say, “ I’m off to bed ! ” 

He wiped away the damp that had gathered on his 
forehead, reasoned with himself for a little while, and 
resolved to shake his. mind free of the ghastly counterfeit 
which still clung to it, by forcing himself to confront, if 
it was only for a moment, the solemn reality. Without 
allowing himself an instant to hesitate, he parted the cur- 
tains at the foot of the bed, aud looked through. 

There was the sad, peaceful, white face, with the awful 
mystery of stillness on it, laid back upon the pillow. No 
stir, no change there ! He only looked at it for a moment 
before he closed the curtains again — but that moment 
steadied him, calmed him, restored him — mind and body 
— to himself. 

He returned to his old occupation of walking up and 
down the room ; persevering in it, this time, till the clock 
struck again. Twelve. • 

As the sound of the clock-bell died away, it was suc- 
ceeded by the confused noise, down stairs, of the drinkers 
in the tap-room leaving the house. The next sound, 
after an interval of silence, was caused by the barring of 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


209 


the door, and the closing of the shutters, at the back of 
the Inn. Then the silence followed again, and was dis- 
turbed no more. 

He was alone now — absolutely, utterly alone with the 
dead man, till the next morning. 

The wick of the candle wanted trimming again. He 
took up the snuffers — but paused suddenly on the very 
point of using them, and looked attentively at the candle 
— then over his shoulder, at the curtained bed — then 
again at the candle. It had been lighted for the firs4: 
time, to show him the way up stairs, and three parts of it 
at least were already consumed. In another hour it 
would be burned out. In another hour — unless he called 
at once to the man who had shut up the Inn, for a fresh 
candle — he would be left in the dark. 

Strongly as his mind had been affected since he had 
entered the room, his unreasonable dread of encountering 
ridicule, and of exposing his courage to suspicion, had not 
altogether lost its influence over him, even yet. He lin- 
gered irresolutely by the table, waiting till he could j)re- 
vail on himself to open the door, and call, from the land- 
ing, to the man who had shut up the Inn. In his present 
hesitating frame of mind, it was a kind of relief to gain a 
few moments only by engaging in the trifling occupation 
of snuffing the candle. His hand trembled a little, and 
the snuffers were heavy and awkward to use. When he 
closed them on the wick, he closed them a hair’s-breadth 
too low. In an instant the candle was out, and the room 
was plunged in pitch darkness. 

The one impression which the absence of light immedi- 
ately produced on his mind, was distrust of the curtained 
bed — distrust which shaped itself into no distinct idea, 
but which was powerful enough, in its very vagueness, to 
bind him down to the chair, to make his heart beat fast, 
and to set him listening intently. No sound stirred in 


210 


THE LAZY TOIJR OF 


the room hut the familiar sound of the rain against the 
window, louder and sharper now than he had heard it 
yet. 

Still the vague distrust, the inexpressible dread pos- 
sessed him, and kept him in his chair. He had pu" his 
carpet-bag on the table, when he first entered the room, 
and he now took the key from his pocket, reached out 
his hand softly, opened the* bag, and groped in it for his 
traveling writing-case, in which he knew that there was a 
small store of matches. When he had got one of the 
matches he waited before he struck it on the coarse wood- 
en table, and listened intently again, without knowing 
why. Still there was no sound in the room but the 
steady, ceaseless, rattling sound of the rain. 

He lighted the candle again, without another moment 
of delay ; and, on the instant of its burning up, the first 
object in the room that his eyes sought for was the cur- 
tained bed. 

Just before the light had been put out, he hi d looked 
in that direction, and had seen no change, no disarrange- 
ment of any sort, in the folds of the closely drawn cur- 
tains. 

When he looked at the bed now, he saw, hanging over 
the side of it, a long white hand. 

It lay perfectly motionless, midway on the side of the 
bed, where the curtain at the head and the curtain at the 
foot met. Nothing more was visible. The clinging cur- 
tains hid every thing but the long white hand. 

He stood looking at it unable to stir, unable to call out ; 
feeling nothing, knowing nothing ; every faculty he pos- 
sessed gathered up and lost in the one seeing faculty. 
How long that first panic held him, he never could tell 
afterward. It might have been only for a momeni; ; it 
might have been for many minutes together. How h( 
got to the bed — whether he ran to it headlong, or whether 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


211 


he approached it slowly — how he wrought himself up to 
unclose the curtains and look in, he never has remembered, 
and never will remember to his dying day. It is ei^ough 
that he did go to the bed, and that he did look inside the 
curtains. 

The man had moved. One of his arms was outside of 
the clothes ; his face was turned a little on the pillow ; 
his eyelids were wide open. Changed as to position, and 
as to one of the features, the face was otherwise fearfully 
and wonderfully unaltered. The dead paleness and the 
dead quiet, were on it still. One glance showed Arthur 
this — one glance before he flew breathless to the door, 
and alarmed the house. 

The man whom the landlord called “ Ben,” was the 
first to appear on the stairs. In three words Arthur 
told him what had happened, and sent him for the nearest 
doctor. 

I, who tell you this story, was then staying with a 
medical friend of mine, in practice at Doncaster, taking 
care of his patients for him during his absence in London ; 
and I, for the time being, was the nearest doctor. They 
had sent for me from the Inn, when the stranger was taken 
ill in the afternoon, but I was not at home, and medical 
assistance was sought for elsewhere. When the man 
from The Two Robins • rang the night-bell, I was just 
thii-king of going to bed. Naturally enough, I did not 
believe a word of his story about ‘‘ a dead man who had 
come to life again.” However, I put on my hat, armed 
myself with one or two bottles of restorative medicine, 
and ran to the Inn, expecting to find nothing more re- 
markable, when I got there, than a patient in a fit. 

My surprise at finding that the man had spoken the 
literal truth was almost, if not quite, equalled by my as- 
tonishment at finding myself face to face with Arthur 
Holliday as soon as I entered the bed-room. It was no 


212 


THE LAZY TOUR OP 


time then for giving or seeking explanations. We just 
shook hands amazedly ; and then 1 ordered everybody 
but Arthur out of the room, and hurried to the man on 
the bed. 

The kitchen hre had not been long out. There was 
plenty of hot water in the boiler, and plenty of flannel 
to be had. With these, with my medicines, and with such 
help as Arthur could render under my direction, I drag- 
ged the man literallv out of the jaws of death. In less 
than an hour from the time when I had been called in, he 
was alive and talking in the bed on which he had been 
laid out to wait for the coroner’s inquest. 

You will naturally ask me what had been the matter 
with him, and I might treat you in reply to along theory, 
plentifully sprinkled with what the children call hard 
words. J prefer telling you that, in this case, cause and 
effect could not be satisfactorily joined together by any 
theory whatever. There are mysteries in life, and the 
conditions of it, which human science has not fathomed 
yet ; and I candidly confess to you that, in bringing that 
man back to existence, I was, morally speaking, groping 
hap-hazard in the dark. I know (from the testimony of 
the doctor who attended him in the afternoon) that the 
vital machinery, so far as its action is appreciable by our 
senses, had, in this case, unquestionably stopped ; and I 
am equally certain (seeing that I recovered him ) that the 
vital principle was not extinct. When I add, that he had 
suffered from a long and complicated illness, and that his 
whole nervous system was utterly deranged, I have told 
you all I really know of the physical condition of my 
dead-alive j)atient at The Two "Robins Inn. 

When he “ came to,” as the phrase goes, he was a 
startling object to look at, with his colorless face, his sun- 
ken cheeks, his wild black eyes, and his long black hair. 
The first question h(i asked me about himself, when he 


TWO IDE APPRENTICES. 


-213 


could speak, made me suspect that I had been called in 
to a man in my own profession. I mentioned to hina my 
surmise, and he told me that 1 was right. 

He said he had come last from Paris, where he had 
been attached to a hospital. That he had lately return- 
ed to England, on his way to Edinburgh, to continue his 
studies ; that he had been taken ill on the journey ; and 
that he had stopped to rest and recover himself at Don- 
caster. He did not add a word about his name, or who 
he was ; and of course, 1 did not question him on the 
subject. All I inquired, when he ceased speaking, was 
what branch of the profession he intended to follow. 

‘‘ Any branch,’’ he said, bitterly, “ which will put 
bread into the mouth of a poor man.” 

At this, Arthur, who had been hitherto watching him 
in silent curiosity, burst out impetuously in his uusal 
good-humored way : 

My dear fellow ! ”( everybody was ‘‘ my dear fellow” 
with Arthur ) “ now you have come to life again, don’t 
begin by being down-hearted about your prospects. I”!! 
answer for it, I can help you to some capital thing in the 
medical line — or, if I can’t, I know my father can.” 

The medical student looked at him steadily. 

‘‘ Thank you,” he said, coldly. Then added, “ May I 
ask who your father is ? ” 

He’s well enough known all about this part of the 
country, “ replied Arthur. “ He is a great manufacturer 
and his name is Holliday.” 

My hand was on the man’s wrist during this brief con- 
versation. ^he instant the name of Holliday was pro- 
nounced I felt the pulse under my fingers flutter, go on 
suddenly with a bound, and beat afterward, for a minute 
or two, at the fever rate. 

“ How did you come here ? ” asked the stranger, quick- 
ly, excitably, passionatelv almost. 


214 ’ 


THK LAZY TOUR OF 


Arthur related briefly what had happened from the 
time^of his first taking the bed at the inn. 

“ I am indebted to Mr. Holliday’s son, then, for the 
help that has saved my life, ’ said the medical student, 
speaking to himself, with a singular sarcasm in his voice. 

Come here ! ” 

He held out, as he spoke, his long, white, bony right 
hand. 

With all my heart,” said Arthur, taking the hand 
cordially. ‘‘ I may confess it now,” he continued, laugh- 
ing, upon my honor, you almost frightened me out of 
my wits.” 

The stranger did not seem to listen. His wild black 
eyes were fixed with a look of eager interest on Arthur’s 
face, and his long bony fingers kept tight hold of Arthur’s 
hand. Young Holliday, on his side, returned the gaze, 
amazed and puzzled by the medical student’s odd lan- 
guage and manners. The two faces were close together ; I 
looked at them ; and, to my amazement, I was suddenly 
impressed by the sense of a likeness between them — not 
in features or complxion, but solely in expression. It 
must have been a strong likeness, or I should certainly 
not have found it out ; for I am naturally slow in detecting 
resemblances between faces. 

“ You have saved my life, ” said the strange man, still 
looking hard in Arthur’s face, still holding tightly by his 
hand. “If you had been my own brother, you could not 
have done more for me than that.” 

He laid a singularly strong emphasis on ^ these three 
words “ my own brother, ” and a change passed over his 
face as he pronounced them — a change that no language of 
mine is competent to describe. 

“ I hope I have not done being of service to you yet, ” 
said Arthur. “ I’ll speak to my father as soon as I get 
home. ” 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


215 


‘‘ You seem to be fond and proud of your father/’ said 
the medical student. “ I suppose, in return, he is fond 
and proud of you ? ” 

“ Of course he is 1” answered Arthur, laughing. “ Is 
there anything wonderful in that ? Isn’t your father 
fond—” 

The stranger suddenly dropped young Holliday’s hand, 
and turned his face away. 

“ I beg your pardon, ” s.-iid Arthur. I hope I have 
not unintentionally pained you. I hope you have not lost 
your father ? ” 

^‘I can’t well love what I have never had,” retorted the 
medical student, with a harsh, mocking laugh. 

What you never had ! ” 

The strange man suddenly caught Arthur’s hand again 
suddenly looked once more hard in his face. 

‘‘ Yes, ” he said, with a repetition of the bitter laugh. 
“You have brought a poor devil back* into the. world, 
who had no business there. Do I astonish you ? W ell ! 
I have a fancy of my own for telling’ you what men in my 
situation generally keep a secret. I have no name and 
no father. The merciful law of Society tells me I am 
Nobody’s Son ! Ask your father if he will be my father 
too, and help me on in life with the family name. ” 

Arthur looked at me more puzzled than ever. I signed 
to him to say nothing, and then laid my fingers again on 
the man’s wrist. No ! In spite of the extraordinary speech 
that he had just made, he was not, as I had been disposed 
to suspect, beginning to get lightheaded. His pulse, by 
this time, had fallen back to a quiet, slow beat, and his skin 
was moist and cool. Not a symptom of fever or agitation 
about him. 

Finding that neither of us answered him, he turned 
to me, and began talking of the extraordinary nature 
of his case, and asking my advice about the future course 

10 


216 


THE LAZY TOUR OP 


of medical treatment to which he ought to subject him 
self. I said the matter required careful thinking over, 
and suggested that I should submit certain prescriptions 
to him the next morning. He told me to write them 
at once, as he would, most likely, be leaving Doncaster 
in the morning, before I was up. It was quite useless 
to represent to him the folly and danger of such a pro- 
ceeding as this. He heard me politely and patiently, 
but held to his resolution, without offering any reasons 
or explanations, and repeated to me, that if I wished to 
give him a chance of seeing my prescription I must write 
it at once. Hearing this, Arthur volunteered the loan of a 
travelling case, which, he said, he had with him ; and, 
bringing it to the bed, shook the note-paper out of the 
pocket of the case forthwith in his usual careless way. 
With the paper there fell out on the counterpane of the 
bed a small packet of sticking-plaster, and a little water- 
color drawing of a landscape. 

The medical student took up the drawing and looked at 
it. His eye fell on some initials neatly written in cipher 
in one corner. He started and trembled ; his pale face 
grew whiter than ever ; his wild black eyes turned on Ar- 
thur, and looked through and through him. 

“ A pretty drawing, ” he said, in a remarkably quiet tone 
of voice. 

“ Ah ? and done by such a pretty girl, said Arthur. 

Oh, such a pretty girl ! I wish it was not a landscape ; 
T wish it was a portrait of her ! ’’ 

“ You admire her very much ? ’’ 

Arthur, half in jest, half in earnest, kissed his hand for 
answer. 

Dove at first sight ! ’’ he said, putting the drawing 
away again. “ But the course of it doesn’t run smooth. 
It’s the old story. She’s monopolized as usual. Tram- 
meled by a rash engagement to some poor man who is 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


217 


never likely to get money enough to marry her. It was 
luclcy I heard of it in time, or 1 should certainly have 
risked a declaration when she gave me that drawing. 
Here, Doctor ! Here is pen, inic, and paper all ready for 
you. 

“ I\nien she gave you that drawing ? Gave it. Gave 
it. He repeated the words slowly to himself, and sudden- 
ly closed his eyes. A momentary distortion passed across 
his face, and I saw one of his hands clutch the bed-clothes 
and squeeze them hard. I thought he was going to be ill 
again, and begged that there might be no more talking. 
He opened his eyes when I spoke, fixed them once more 
searchingly on Arthur, and said, slowly and distinctly, “ You 
like her and she likes you. The poor man may die out 
of your way. Who can tell that she may not give you 
herself as well as her drawing, after all ? ’’ 

Before young Holliday could answer, he turned to me, 
and said, in a whisper, “ Now for the prescription. From 
that time, though he spoke to Arthur again, he never look- 
ed at him more. 

When I had written the prescription, he examined it, 
approved of it, and then astonished us both by abruptly 
wishing us good-night. I offered to sit up with him, and 
he shook his head. Arthur offered to sit up with him, and 
he said, shortly, with his face turned away, No ! ’’ I in- 
sisted on having somebody left to watch him. He gave 
way when he found I was determined, and said he would 
accept the services of the waiter at the inn. 

“ Thank you both,'’ he said, as we rose to go. “ I have 
one favor to ask — ^not of you, Doctor, for 1 leave you to 
exercise your professional discretion — but of Mr. Holliday.” 
His eyes, while he spoke, still rested steadily on me, and 
never turned toward Arthur. “ I beg that Mr. Holliday will 
not mention to any one — least of all to his father — the events 
that have occurred and the words that have passed in this 


218 


THE LAZY TOUR OP 


room. I entreat him to bury me in his memory, as, but 
for him, I might have been buried in my grave. I can- 
not give my reasons for making this strange request. I 
can only implore him to grant it.’’ 

His voice faltered for the first time, and he hid his face 
on the pillow. Arthur, completely bewildered, gave the 
required pledge. I took young Holliday away with me 
immediately afterward, to the house of my friend, deter- 
mining to go back to the inn, and to see the medical stu- 
dent again before he had left in the morning. 

I returned to the inn at eight o’clock, purposely abstain- 
ing from waking Arthur, who was sleeping olf the past 
night’s excitement on one of my friend’s sofas. A suspi- 
cion had occurred to me, as soon as I was alone in my bed- 
room, which made me resolve that Holliday and the 
stranger, whose life he had saved, should not meet again, if 
I could prevent it. I have already alluded to certain re- 
ports, or scandals, which I knew of, relating to the early 
life of Arthur’s father. While I was thinking in my bed 
of what had passed at the inn — of the change in the stu- 
dent’s pulse when he heard the name of Holliday ; of the 
resemblance of expression that I had discovered between 
his face and Arthur’s ; of the emphasis he had laid on 
these three words, “ my own brother ; ” and of his incom- 
prehensible acknowledgment of his own illegitimacy — while 
I was thinking of these things, the reports I have mentioned 
suddenly flew into my mind and linked themselves fast 
to the chain of my previous reflections. Something within 
me whispered, “ It is best that those two young men should ^ 
not meet again.” I felt it before I slept ; I felt it when I 
woke : and I went, as I told you, alone to the inn the next 
morning. 

I had missed my only opportunity of seeing my nameless 
patient again. He had been gone nearly an hour when I 
inquired for him. 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


219 


I have now told you everything that I know for certain 
in relation to the man wdioin I bi’ouglit back to life in the 
double-bedded room of the Inn at Doncaster. What 1 
have next to add is matter for inference and surmise, and 
is not, strictly speaking, matter of fact. 

1 have to tell you, first, that the medical student turned 
out to be strangely and unaccountably right in assuming it 
as more than probable that Arthur Holliday would marry 
the young lady who had given him the water-color draw 
ing of the landscape. That marriage took place a little 
more than a year after the events occurred which I have 
just been relating. The young couple came to live in the 
neighborhood in which I was then established in practice. 
I was present at the wedding, and was rather surprised to 
find that Arthur was singularly reserved with me, botH 
before and after his marriage, on the subject of the young 
lady’s ji^dor engagement. He only referred to it once, 
w^hen we were alone, merely telling me on that occasion 
that his wife had done all that honor and duty required 
of her in th.e matter, and that the engagement had been 
broken off with the full approval of her parents. I never 
heard more from him than this. For three years he and 
his wife lived together happily. At the expiration of that 
time the symptoms of a serious illness first declared them- 
selves in Mrs. Arthur Holliday. It turned out to be a 
long, lingering, hopeless malady. I attended her through- 
out. We had been great friends when she was well, and we 
became more attached to each other than ever when she 
was ill. I had many long and interesting conversations 
with her in the intervals when she suffered least. The 
result of one of those conversations I may briefly relate, 
leaving you to draw any inferences from it tliat you please. 

. The interview to which I refer occurred shortly before 
her death. I called one evening, as usual, and found her 
alone, with a look in her eyes which told me that she had 


220 


THE LyVZT TOUR OP 


b66ii crying. She only informed me iit first tliat she li;id ' 
been depressed in spirits : but by little und little she be- 
came more communicative, and confessed to me that she 
had been looking over some old letters which had been 
addressed to her before she had seen Arthur, by a man to 
whom she had been engaged to be married. I asked her 
how the engagement came to be broken off. fehe replieci 
that it had not been broken off, but that it had died out 
in a very mysterious way. Phe person to whom she was 
engaged— her first love she called him— was very poor, 
and there was no immediate prospect of their being mar- 
ried. He followed my profession, and went abroad to 
study. They had corresponded regularly until the time 
when, as she believed, he had returned to England. From 
t^at period she heard no more of him. . He was of a fret- 
ful, sensitive temperament ; and she feared that she might 
have inadvertently done or said something that offended 
him. However that might be, he had never written to her 
again ; and, after waiting a year, she had married Arthur. 
I asked when the first estrangement had begun, and found 
that the time at which she ceased to hear anything of her 
first lover, exactly corresponded with the time at which I 
had been called in to my mysterious patient at The Two 
Robins Inn. 

A fortnight after that conversation, she died. In 
course of time Arthur married again. Of late years, he 
has lived principally in London, and I have seen little or 
nothing of him. 

I have many years to pass over before I can approach 
to anything like a conclusion of this fragmentary narra- 
tive. And even when that later period is reached, the 
little that I have to say will not occupy your attention 
for more than a few minutes. Between six and seven 
years ago, the gentleman to whom I inti-oduced you in 
this room came to me, with good professional recommend- 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


221 


ations to fill the position of my assistant. We met, not 
like stran.^ers, but like friends, the only difference between 
us being, that I was very much surprised to see him, and 
that he did not appear to be at all surprised to see me. 
[f lie was my son or my brother, I believe he could not 
be fonder of me than he is ; but he has never volunteered 
any confidences since he has been here on the subject of 
his past life. I saw something that was familiar to me 
in his face when we first met, and yet it was also some- 
thing that suggested the idea of change. I had a notion 
once that my patient at the Inn might be a natural son of 
Mr. Holliday’s ; I had another idea that he might also 
have been the man who was engaged to Arthur’s first 
wife ; and I have a third idea, still clinging to me, that 
Mr. Lorn is the only man in England who could really 
enlighten me, if he chose, on both those doubtful points. 
His hair is not black now, and his eyes are dimmer than 
the piercing eyes that I remember ; but, for all that, he 
is very like the nameless medical student of my young 
days — ^very like him. And sometimes when I come 
home late at night, and find him asleep, and wake him, 
he looks, in coming to, wonderfully like the stranger at 
Doncaster as he raised himself in the bed on that memor- 
able night ! 

The Doctor paused. Mr. Goodchild, who had been 
following every word that fell from his lips up to this 
time, leaned forward eagerly to ask a question. Before 
he could say a word the latch of the door was raised 
without any warning sound of footsteps in the passage 
outside. A long, white, bony hand appeared through the 
opening, gently pushing the door, which was prevented 
from working freely on its hinges by a fold in the carpet.- 
under it. ^ 

“ That hand ! Look at that hand, Doctor ! ” said Mr. 
Goodchild, touching him. 


222 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


At the same moment the Doctor looked at Mr. Good- 
child, and whispered to him, significantly : “ Hush i ne 
has come back.^^ 


CHAPTER THE THIRD. 



IHE Cumberland Doctor’s mention of Doncaster Races 


inspired Mr. Francis Goodchild with the idea of going 
down to Doncaster to see the races. Doncaster being a 
good way off, and quite out of the way of the Idle Ap- 
prentices (if anything could be out of their way, who 
had no way), it necessarily followed that Francis per- 
ceived Doncaster in the race-week to be, of all possible 
idlenesses, the particular idleness that would completely 
satisfy him. 

Thomas, with an enforced idleness grafted on the natu- 
ral and voluntary power of his disposition, was not of 
this mind ; objecting that a man compelled to lie on his 
back on a floor, a sofa, a table, a line of chairs, or any- 
thing he could get to lie upon, was not in racing condi- 
tion, and that he desired nothing better than to lie where 
he was, enjoying himself in looking ai the flies on the 
ceiling. But Francis Goodchild, who had been walking 
round his companion in a circuit of twelve miles for two 
days, and had begun to doubt whether it was reserved for 
him ever to be idle in his life, not only overpowered this 
objection, but even converted Thomas Idle to a scheme 
he formed (another idle inspiration), of conveying the 
said Thomas to the sea-coast, and putting his injured leg 
under a stream of salt-water. 

Plunging ^into this happy conception head-foremost, 
Mr. Goodchild immediately referred to the^ county-map, 
and ardently discovered jhat the most delicious piece of 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


223 


8(5a-coast to be found within the limits of England, Ireland, 
Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, and the Channel 
Islwx^ds, all summed up together, was Allonby on the 
coast of Cumberland. There was the coast of Scotland 
opposite to Allonby, said Mr. Goodchild with enthusi- 
asm ; there was a fine Scottish mountain on that Scottish 
coast; there were Scottish lights to be seen shining 
across the glorious Channel, and at Allonby itself there 
was every idle luxury (no doubt), that a watering-place 
could offer to the heart of idle man. Moreover, said Mr. 
Goodchild, with his finger on the map, this exquisite 
retreat was approached by a coach-road, from a uiilway 
station called Aspatria — a name, in a manner, suggestive 
of the departed glories of Greece, associated with one 
of the most engaging and most famous of Greek women. 
On this point, Mr. Goodchild continued at intervals to 
breathe a vein of classic fancy and eloquence exceedingly 
irksome to Mr. Idle, until it appeared that the honest 
English pronunciation of that Cumberland country short- 
ened Aspatria into “ Spatter.^’ After this supplementary 
discovery, Mr. Goodchild said no more about it. 

By way of Spatter, the crippled Idle was carried, 
hoisted, pushed, poked, and packed into and out of car- 
riages, into and out of beds, into and cut of tavern rest- 
ing-places, until he was brought at length within sniff of 
the sea. And now, behold the apprentices gallantly 
riding into Allonby in a one-horse fly, bent upon staying 
in that peaceful marine valley until the turbulent Doncas- 
ter time shall come round upon the wheel in its turn among 
what are in sporting registers called the “ Fixtures ’’ for 
the month. 

“ Do you see Allonby ? ’’ asked Thomas Idle. 

“I don’t see it yet,” said Francis, looking out of the 
window. 

“ It must be there,” said Thomas Idle. 


224 


TIfE LAZY TOUR OF 


“ I don’t see it,” returned Francis. 

“ It must be there,” repeated Thomas Idle, fretfully 
“ Lord bless me ! exclaimed Francis, dravving in 
head, I suppose this is- it ! ” 

“ A watering-place,” retorted Thomas Idle, with t 
pardonable sharpness of an invalid, “ can’t be five gentle 
men in straw hats on a form on one side of a door, and 
four ladies in hats and falls on a form on another side of 
a door, and three geese in a dirty little brook before them, 
and a boy’s legs hanging over a bridge ( with a boy’s body, 
I suppose, on the other side of the parapet), and a donkey 
running away. What are you talking about? ” 

Allonby, gentlemen,’^ said the most comfortable of 
landladies, as she opened one door of the carriage ; “ Al- 
lonby, gentlemen,” said the most attentive of landlords, 
as he opened the other. 

Thomas Idle yielded his arm to the ready Goodchild, 
and descended from the vehicle. Thomas, now just able 
to grope his way along, in a doubled up condition, with 
the aid of two thick sticks, was no bad embodiment of 
Commodore Trunnion, or of one of those many gallant 
Admirals of the stage, who have all ample fortunes, gout, 
thick sticks, tempers, wards, and nephews. With this 
distinguished naval appearance upon him, Thomas made a 
crab-like progress up a clean little bulk-headed staircase, 
into a clean little bulk-headed room, where he slowly de- 
posited himself on a sofa, with a stick on either hand of 
him, looking exceedingly grim. 

“ Francis,” said Thomas Idle, “ what do you think of 
this place ? ” 

I think, returned ]\Ir. Goodchild, in a glowing way 
it is everything we expected.” 

‘‘ Hah ! ” said Thomas Idle. 

There is the sea, ’ cried Mr. Goodchild, pointing out 
of the window ; “ and here,” pointing to the lunch on the 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


225 


table, “ are shrimps. Let us — here Mr. Goodchild 
looked out of the window, as if in searcn of something, 
and looked in again, — let us eat ’em.’’ 

The shrimps eaten and the dinner ordered, Mr. Good- 
child went out to survey the watering-place. As Chorus 
of the Drama, without whom Tliomas could make nothing 
of the scenery, he by-and-by returned to have the follow 
ing report screwed out of him. 

In brief, it was the most delightful place ever seen. 

“ But,” Thomas Idle asked, “ where is it ? ” 

“ It’s what you may call generally up and down the 
beach, here and there,” said' Mr. Goodchild, with a twist 
of his hand. 

“ Proceed,” said Thomas Idle. 

It was, Mr. Goodchild went on to say, in cross-examin- 
ation, what you might call a primitive place. . Large ? 
No, it was not large. Who ever expected it would be 
large ? Shape ? What a question to ask ! No shape. 
What sort of a street ? Why, no street. Shops ? Yes, 
of course (quite indignant). How many? Who ever 
went into a place to count the shops ? Ever so many. 
Six ? Perhaps. A library ? Why, of course ! ( indig- 
nant again ). Good collection of books ? Most likely — 
couldn’t say — had seen nothing in it but a pair of scales. 
Any reading-room ? Of course there was a reading-room. 
Where ? Where ! why, over there. Where was over 
there ? Why, there! Let Mr. Idle carry his eye to that 
bit of waste ground above high-water mark, where the 
rank grass and loose stone's were most in a litter, and he 
would see a sort of a long ruinous brick loft, next door to 
a ruinous brick outhouse, which loft had a ladder outside 
to get up by. That was the reading-room, and if Mr. 
Idle didn’t like the idea of a weaver’s shuttle throbbing 
under a reading-room, that was his look out. He was not 
to dictate, Mr. Goodchild supposed (indignant again), 
to the company. 


226 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


By-the-bye,” Thomas Idle observed ; “ the com- 

pany ? ” 

Well ! ( Mr. Goodchild went on to report) very nice 
company. Where were they ? Why, there they were. Mr. 
Idle could see the tops of their hats, he supposed. What ? , 
Those nine hats, again, five gentlemen’s and four ladies’ ? 
Yes, to be sure. Mr. Goodcliild hoped the company 
werenot to be expected to wear helmets, to please Mr. 
Idle. 

Beginning to recover his temper at about this point, 
Mr. Goodchild voluntarily reported that if you wanted to 
be primitive, you could be primitive here, and that if you 
wanted to be idle, you could be idle here. In the course of 
some days, he added, that there were three fishing-boats, 
no rigging, and that there were plenty of fishermen who 
never fished. That they got their living entirely by look- 
ing at the ocean. What nourishment they looked out of 
it to support their strength, he couldn’t say, but, he sup- 
posed it was some sort of Iodine. The place was full ©f 
their children, who were always, upside down on the pub- 
lic buildings (two small bridges over the brook) ,and al- 
ways hurting themselves or one another, so that their 
wailings made more continual noise in the air than could 
have been got in a busy place. The houses people lodged 
in, were nowhere in particular, and were in capital ac- 
cordance with the beach, being all more or less cracked 
and damaged as its shells were, and all empty — as its shells 
were. Among them, was an edifice of destitute appear- 
ance, with a number of wall-eyed windows in it, looking 
desperately out to Scotland, as if for help, which said k 
was a Bazaar (and it ought to know), and where you 
might buy anything you wanted — supposing what you 
wanted was a little camp-stool, or a child’s wheelbarrow. 
Tlie brook crawled orstoj)ped between the houses and 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


227 


the sea, and the donkey was always running away, and 
when he got into the brook lie was pelted out with stones, 
which never hit him, and which always hit some of the 
children who were upside down on the public buildings, 
and made their lamentations louder. Xhis donkey was 
the public excitement of Allonby, and was probably sup- 
ported at the public expense. 

The foregoing descriptions, delivered in separate items, 
on separate days of adventurous discovery, Mr. Goodchild 
severally wound up, by looking out of the window, looking 
in again, and saying, “ But there is the sea, and here are 
the shrimps — let us eat ’em.” 

There were fine sunsets at Allonby, when the low flat 
beach, with its pools of water and its dry patches, changed 
into long bars of silver and gold in various states of 
burnishing, and there were fine views — on fine days — of 
the Scottish coast. But, when it rained at Allonby, Allon- 
by, thrown back upon its ragged self, became a kind of 
place which the donkey seemed to have found out, and to 
have his highly sagacious reasons for wishing to bolt 
from. Thomas Idle observed, too, that Mr. Goodchild, 
with a noble show of disinterestedness, became every day 
more ready to walk to Maryport and back, for letters ; 
and suspicions began to harbor in the mind of Thomas 
that his friend deceived him, and that Maryport was a 
preferable place. 

Therefore, Thomas said to Francis, on a day when they 
had looked at the sea and eaten the shrimps, “ My mind 
misgives me, Goodchild, that you go to Maryport, like 
the boy in the story-book, to ask it to be idle with you.” 

“ Judge, then, ” returned Francis, adopting the style of 
the. story-book, “ with what success. I go to a region which 
is a bit of water-side Bristol, with a alico ot 
seasoning of Wolverhampton ^ and a garnish of Ports- 
mouth, and I say, ‘ Will you come and be idle with me ? * 


228 


Tl'E LAZY TOUll OF 


And it answers, ‘ No ; for I am a great deal too vaporous, 
and a great deal too rusty, and a great deal too muddy, and a 
great deal too dirty altogether ; and I have ships to load, and 
pitch and tar to boil, and iron to hammer, and steam to 
get up, and smoke to make, and stone to quarry, and fifty 
other disagreeable things to do, and I can’t be idle with 
you.’ Then I go into jagged up-hill and down-hill streets, 
where I am in the pastry-cook’s shop at one moment, and 
next momentin savage fastnesses of moorandmorass, beyond 
the confines of civilization, and I say to those murky and 
black-dusty streets, ‘ Will you come and be idle with me ? ’ 
To which they reply, ‘ No, we can’t, indeed, for we haven’t 
the spirits, and we are startled by the echo of your feet 
on the sharp pavement, and we have so many goods in 
our shop-windows which nobody wants, and we have so 
much to do for a limited public which never comes to us 
to be done for, that we are altogether out of sorts and 
can’t enjoy ourselves with any one.’ So I go to the 
Post-office, and knock at the shutter, and I say to the Post 
master, ‘ Will you come and be idle with me ? ’ To which 
he rejoins, ‘ No, I really can’t, for I live, as you may see, in 
such a very little Post-office, and pass my life behind such 
a very little shutter, that my hand, when I put it out, is 
as the hand of a giant crammed through the window of a 
dwarf’s house at a fair and I am a mere Post-office an- 
chorite in a cell much too small for him, and I can’t get 
out. and I can’t get in, and I have no space to be idle in 
even if I would. So the boy,” said Mr. Goodchild, con- 
cluding the tale, “ comes back with the letters after all, 
and lives happy never afterwards.” 

But it may, not unreasonably, be asked — while Francis 
Goodchild was wandering hither and thither, storing his 
mmd with perpetual observation of men and things, and 
sincerely believing himself to be the laziest creature in 
existence all the time — how did Thomas Idle, crippled and 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 229 

confined to the house, contrive to get through the hours 
of the day ? 

Prone on the sofa, Thomas made no attempt to get 
through the hours, but passively allowed the hours to 
get through Azm. Where other men in his situation would 
have read books and improved their minds, Thomas slept 
and rested his body. W^here other men would have pon- 
dered anxiously over their future prospects, Thomas 
dreamed lazily of his past life. The one solitary thing 
he did, which most other people would have done in his 
place, was to resolve on making certain alterations and 
improvements in his mode of existence, as soon as the ef- 
fects of the misfortune that had overtaken him had all 
passed away. Remembering that the current of his life 
had hitherto oozed along in one smooth stream of laziness 
occasionally troubled on the surface by a slight passing 
ripple of industry, his present ideas on the subject of self- 
reform, inclined him — not, as the reader may be disposed 
to imagine, to project schemes for a new existence of en- 
terprise and exertion-^but, on the contrary, to resolve 
that he would never, if he could possibly help it, be active 
or industrious again throughout the whole of his future 
career. 

It is due to Mr. Idle to relate that his mind sauntered 
towards this peculiar conclusion on distinct and logically 
producible grounds. After reviewing, quite at his ease, 
and with many needful intervals of repose, the generally- 
placid spectacle of his past existence, he arrived at the 
discovery that all the great disasters which had tried his 
patience and equanimity in early life had been caused by 
his having allowed himself to be deluded into imitating 
some pernicious example of activity and industry that had 
been set him by others. The trials to which he here al- 
ludes where three in number, and may he thus reckoned 
up : First, the disaster of being an unpopular and a thrash- 
ed boy at school ; secondly the disaster of falling seriously 


230 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


ill ; thirdly, the disaster of becoming acquainted with a 
great bore. 

The first disaster occurred after Thomas had been an 
idle and a popular boy at school for some happy years. 
One Christmas-time, he was stimulated by the evil ex- 
ample of a companion, whom he had always trusted and 
liked, to be untrue to himself and to try for a prize at the 
ensuing half-yearly examination. He did try, and he got 
a prize — how, he did not distinctly know at the moment, 
and cannot remember now. No sooner, however, liad the 
book — Moral Hints to the Young on the Value of Time 
— ^been placed in his hands, than the first troubles of his 
life began. The idle boys deserted him, as a traitor to 
their cause. The industrious boys avoided him, as a danger- 
ous interloper; one of their number, who had always* won 
the prize on previous occasions, expressing just resent- 
ment at the invasion of his privileges by calling Thomas 
into the play-ground, and then and there administering to 
him the first sound and genuine thrashing that he had re- 
ceived in his life. Unpopular from that moment, as a 
beaten boy, who belonged to no side and was rejected by 
all parties, young Idle soon lost caste with his masters, as 
he had previously lost caste with his school-fellows. He 
had forfeited the comfortable reputation of being the one 
lazy member of the youthful community whom it was 
quite hopeless to punish. Never again did he hear the 
head master say reproachfully to an industrious boy who 
had committed a fault, I might have expected this in 
Thomas Idle, but it is inexcusable, sir, in you, who know 
better.” Never more, after winning that fatal prize, did 
he escape the retributive imposition or the avenging 
birch. From that time, the masters made him work, and 
the boys would not let him play. From that time, his 
social position steadily declined, and his life at school be- 
came a perpetual burden to him. 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


231 


So, again, with the second disaster. While Thomas 
was lazy, he was a model of health. His first attempt at 
active exertion and his first suffering from severe illness 
are connected together by the intimate relations of cause 
and effect. Shortly after leaving school, he accompanied 
a party of friends to a cricket-field, in his natural and ap- 
propriate character of spectator only. On the ground, it 
was discovered that the players fell short of the required 
number, and facile Thomas was persuaded to assist in 
making up the complement. At a certain appointed 
time, he was roused from peaceful slumber in a dry ditch, 
and placed before three wickets with a- bat in his hand. 
Opposite to him, behind three more wickets, stood one of 
his bosom friends, filling the situation (as he was in- 
formed) of bowler. No words can describe Mr. Idle’s 
horror and amazement when he saw this young man — on 
ordinary occasions the meekest and mildest of human 
beings — suddenly contract his eyebrows, compress his lips, 
assume the aspect of an infuriated savage, run back a 
few steps, then run forward, and, without the slightest 
previous provocation, hurl a detestably hard ball with all 
his might straight at Thomas’ legs. Stimulated to pre- 
ternatural activity of body and sharpness of eye by the 
instinct of self-preservation, Mr. Idle contrived, by jump- 
ing deftly aside at the right moment, and by using his bat 
(ridiculously narrow as it was for the purpose) as a 
shield, to preserve his life and limbs from the dastardly 
attack that had been made on both, to leave the full force 
of the deadly missile to strike his wicket instead of hia 
leg ; and to end the innings, so far as his side was con* 
c<-rned, by being immediately bowled out. Grateful for 
his escape he was about to return to the dry ditch, when 
he was peremptorily stopped, and told that the other side 
was “going in,” and that he was expected to “ field.” 
His conception of the whole art and mystery of “ field- 

10 "^ 


232 


THE LAZY TOUK OF 


ing, may be summed up iu three words of serious advice 
which lie privately administered to himself on that trying 
occasion avoid the ball. Fortified by this sound and 
salutary principle, he took his own course, impervious 
alike to ridicule and abuse. Wlienever the ball came 
near him, he thought of his shins, and got out of the way 
immediately. « Catch it ! ” ‘‘ Stop it ! ‘‘ Pitch it up ! ” 

were cries that passed by him like the idle wind that he 
regarded not. He ducked under it, he jumped over it, 
he whisked himself away from it on either side. Never 
once, throughout the whole innings, did he and the ball 
come together on. any thing approaching to intimate terms. 
Xhe unnatural activity of body which was necessarily 
called forth for the accomplishment of this result threw 
Thomas Idle, for the first time in his life, into a perspira- 
tion. Ihe pei'spiration, in consequence of his want of 
practice in the management of that particular result of 
bodily activity, was suddenly checked; the inevitable chill 
succeeded ; and that, in its turn, was followed by a fever. 
For the first time since his birth, Mr. Idle found himself 
confined to his bed for many weeks together, wasted and 
worn by a long illness, of which his own disastrous 
muscular exertion had been the sole first cause. 

The third occasion on which Thomas found reason to 
reproach himself bitterly for the mistake of having at- 
tempted to be industrious, was connected with his choice 
of a calling in life. Having no interest in the Church, 
he appropriately selected the next best profession for a 
lazy man in England — the Bar. -Although tlie Benchers 
of the Inns of Court have lately abandoned their good 
old principles, and oblige their students to make so--i< 
show of studying, in Mr. Idle’s time no such innovation 
as this existed. Young men who aspired to the honor 
able title of barrister were, very properly, not asked to 
learn anything of the law, but were merely required^ to 


OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES.. 


233 


eat a certain number of dinners at the table of their Hall, 
and to pay a certain sum of money ; and were called to 
the Bar as soon as they could prove that they had suffic- 
iently complied with these extremely sensible regulations. 
Never did Thomas move more harmoniously in concert 
with his elders and betters than when he was qualifying 
himself for admission among the barristers of his native 
country. Never did he feel more deeply what real lazi- 
ness was in all the serene majesty of its nature, than on 
the memorable day when he was called to the bar, after 
‘having carefully abstained from opening his law-books 
during his period of probation, except to fall asleep over 
them. How he could ever again have become indus- 
trious, even for the shortest period, after that great re- 
ward conferred upon his idleness, quite passes his compre- 
hension. The kind benchers did everything they could 
to show him the folly of exerting himself. They wrote 
out his probationary exercise for him, and never expected 
him even to take the trouble of reading it through when 
it was written. They invited him, with seven other 
choice spirits as lazy as himself, to come and be called to 
the bar, while they were sitting over their wine and fruit 
after dinner. They put his oaths of allegiance, and his 
dreadful official denunciations of the Pope and the Pre- 
tender so gently into his mouth, that he hardly knew how 
the words got there. They wheeled all their chairs 
softly round from the table, and sat surveying the young 
barristers with their backs to their bottles, rather than 
stand up, or adjourn to hear the exercises read. And 
when Mr. Idle and the seven unlaboring neophytes, 
ranged in order, as a class, with their backs considerately 
placed against a screen, had begun, in rotation, to read 
the exercises which they had not written, even then, each 
Bencher, true to the great lazy principle of the whole 
proceeding, stopped each neophyte before he had stam- 


234 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


m6red through his first line, and bowed to him, and told 
him politely that he was a barrister from that monmnt. 
This TV as all the ceremony. It was followed by a social 
supper, and by the presentation, in accordance with an- 
cient custom, of a pound of sweetmeats and a bottle of 
Maderia, offered in the way of needful refreshment, by 
each grateful neophyte to each beneficent Bencher. It 
may seem inconceivable that Thomas should ever have 
forgotten the great do-nothing principle instilled by such 
a ceremony as this ; but it is, nevertheless, true, that 
certain designing students of industrious habits found him 
out, took advantage of his easy humor, persuaded him 
that it was discreditable to be a barrister and to know 
nothing whatever about the law, and lured him by the 
force of their own evil example, into a conveyancer’s 
chambers, to make up for lost time, and to qualify him-' 
self for practice at the Bar. After a fortnight of self- 
delusion, the curtain fell from his eyes ; he resumed his 
natural character, and shut up his books. But the re- 
tribution which had hitherto always followed his little 
casual errors of industry followed them still. He could 
get away from the conveyancer’s chambers, but he could 
not get away from one of the pupils, who had taken a 
fancy to him, — a tall, serious, raw-boned, hard-working,^ 
disputatious pupil, with ideas of his own about reforming 
the Law of Real Property, who has been the scourge of 
Mr. Idle’s existence ever since the fatal day when he fell 
into the. mistake of attempting to study the law. Before 
that time his friends were all sociable idlers like himself* 
Since that time, the burden of bearing'with a hard-working 
young man has become part of his lot in life. Go where 
he will now, he can never feel certain that the raw-boned 
pupil is not affectionately waiting for him round a corner, 
to tell him a little more about the Law of Real Property. 
Suffer as he may under the infliction, he can never com* 


TWO IDLE APPKENTICES. 


235 


plain, for he must always remember, with unavailing re- 
gret, that he has his own thoughtless industry to thank 
for first exposing him to the great social calamitv oi 
knowing a bore. 

These events of his past life, with the significant result 
that they brought about, pass drowsily through Thomas 
Idle’s memory, while he lies alone on the sofa at Allonby 
and elsewhere, dreaming away the time which his fellow 
apprentice gets through so actively out of doors. Re- 
membering the lesson of laziness which his past disasters 
teach, and bearing in mind also the fact that he is crippled 
in one leg because he exerted himself to go up a moun- 
tain, when he ought to have known that his proper course 
of conduct was to stop at the bottom of it, he holds now, 
and will for the future firmly continue to hold, by his 
new resolution never to be industrious again, on any pre- 
tence whatever, for the rest of his life. The physical re- 
sults of his accident have been related in a previous 
chapter. The moral results now stand on record ; and, 
with the enumeration of these, that part of the present 
narrative which is occupied by the Episode of The Sprain- 
ed Ankle, may now perhaps be considered, in all its as- 
pects, as finished and complete. 

“ How do you propose that we get through this present 
afternoon and evening?” demanded Thomas Idle, after 
two or three hours of the foregoing reflections at Allon- 
by. 

Mr. Goodchild faltered, looked out of the wijidow, 
looked in again, and said, as he had so often said before, 
‘‘ There is the sea, and here are the shrimps ; — ^let us eat 
’em ! ” 

But, the wise donkey was at that moment in the act of 
bolting ; not with the irresolution of his previous efforts 
which had been wanting in sustained force of character, 
but with real vigor of purpose : shaking the dust off his 


236 


THE LAZY TOUR OP 


mane and hind feet at Allonbj, and tearing away from it, 
as if he had nobly made up his mind that he never would 
be taken alive. At sight of this inspiring spectacle, which 
was visible from his sofa, Thomas Idle stretched his neck 
and dwelt upon it rapturously. 

''-Francis Goodchild,’’ he then said, turning to his com- 
panion with a solemn air, " this is a delightful little Inn, 
excellently kept by the most comfortable of landladies and 

the most attentive of landlords, but the donkey’s 

right ! ” . 

The words, " There is the sea, and here are the 

again trembled on the lips of Goodchild, unaccompanied 
however by any sound. 

" Let us instantly pack the portmanteaus,” said Thom- 
as Idle, " pay the bill, and order a fly out, with instruc- 
tions to the driver to follow the donkey ! ” 

Mr. Goodchild, who had only wanted encouragement to 
disclose the real state of his feeling, and who had been 
pining beneath his weary secret, now burst into tears, and 
confessed that he thought another day in the place would 
be the death of him. 

So, the two idle apprentices followed the donkey until 
the night was far advanced. Whether he was recaptur- 
ed by the town-council, or is bolting at this hour through 
the United Kingdom, they know not. They hope he 
may be still bolting; if so, their best wishes are with 
him. 

It entered Mr Idle’s head, on the borders of Cumber- 
land, that there could be no idler place to stay at, except 
by snatches of a few minutes each, than a railway station. 
" An intermediate station on a line — a junction^ — any- 
thing of that sort,” Thomas suggested. Mr. Goodchild ap- 
proved of the idea as eccentric, and they journeyed on and 
on, until they came to such a station where there was 
an Inn. 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


237 


“ Here/’ said Thomas, ‘‘ we may be luxuriously lazy ; 
other people will travel for us, as it were, and we shall 
laugh at their folly.” 

It was a Junction-Station, where the wooden razors 
before mentioned shaved the air very often, and where 
the sharp electric-telegraph bell was in a very restless 
condition. All manner of cross-lines of rails came zigzag- 
ing into it, like a Congress of iron vipers; and, a little 
way out of it, a pointsman in an elevated signal-box was 
constantly going through the motions of drawing immense 
quantities of beer at a public-house bar. In one direction, 
confused perspectives of embankments and arches were to 
be seen from the platform ; in the other, the rails soon 
disentangled themselves into two tracts, and shot away 
under a bridge, and curved round a corner. Sidings 
were there, in which empty luggage-vans and cattleboxes 
often butted against each other as if they couldn’t agree; 
and warehouses were there, in which great quantities 
of goods seemed to have taken the veil (of the con- 
sistency of tarpaulin), and to have retired from the 
world without any hope of getting back to it. Re-, 
freshmen t-rooms were there; one, for the hungry and 
thirsty Iron Locomotives, where their coke and water 
were ready, and of good quality ; for they were dangerous 
to play tricks with ; the other, for the hungry and thirs- 
ty human Locomotive who might take what they could 
get, and whose chief consolation was provided in the 
form of three terrific urns or vases of white metal, con- 
taining nothing, each forming a breastwork for a defiant 
and apparently much injured woman. 

Established at this Station, Mr. Thomas Idle, and Mr. 
Francis Goodchild resolved to enjoy it. But its con- 
trasts were very violent, and there was also an infection 
in it. 

First, as to its contrasts. They were onh’ two, but they 


238 


TITE LAZY TOUR OP 


were Lethargy and Madness. The Station was eithf? 
totally unconscious or, wildly raving. By day, in its uii'- 

conscious state it looked as if no life could come to it 

as if it were all rust, dust, and ashes — as if the last train 
for ever had gone without issuing any Return Tickets — 
as if the last Engine had uttered its last shriek and burst. 
One awkward shave of tlie air from the wooden razor, 
and everything changed. Tight office-doors flew open, pan- 
els yielded, books, newspapers, travelling-caps and wrap- 
pers broke out of brick walls; money chinked, convey- 
ances oppressed by nightmares of luggage came careerin<y 
into the yard, porters started up from secret places, ditto 
the much-injured women, the shining bell, who lived in 
a little tray on stilts by himself, flew into a man’s 
hand and clamored violently. The pointsman aloft in 
the signal-box made the motions of drawing, with some 
difficulty, hogsheads of beer. Down Train ! More beer. 
Up Train ! More beer. Cross Junction Train ! More beer. 
Cattle Train ! More beer. Goods Train ! Simmering, whist- 
ling, trembling, rumbling, thundering. Trains on the whole 
confusion of intersecting rails, crossing one another, back- 
ing to go forward, tearing into distance to come close. 
People frantic. Exiles seeking restoration to their native 
carriages, and banished to remoter climes. More beer 
and more bell. Then, in a minute, the Station relapsed 
into stupor as the stoker of the Cattle Train, the last 
to depart, went gliding out of it, wiping the long nose of 
his oil-can with a dirty pocket-handkerchief. 

® J ifs unconscious state, the Station was not 

so much as visible. Something in the air, like an enter- 
prising chemist established in business on one of the 
boughs of Jack’s ^beanstalk, was all that could be dis- 
cerned of it under the stars. In a moment it would 
break out, a constellation of gas. In another moment, 
wenty rival chemists on twenty rival beanstalks, into 


TWO IDLE APPliENTlOlCS. 239 

existence. Then the Furies would be seen, waving their 
lurid torches up and down the confused perspectives of 
enbaiikments and arches — would be heard too, wail- 
ing and shrieking. Then, the Station would be full of 
palpitating trains, as in the day ; with the heightening 
difference they were not so clearly seen as in the day, 
whereas the station walls, starting forward under the gas, 
like a hippopotamus’s eyes dazzled the human locomotives 
with the sauce-bottle, the cheap music, tlie bedstead, the 
distorted range of buildings where the patent safes are 
made, the gentleman in the registered umbrella, the lady 
returning from the ball with the registered respirator, . 
and all their other embellishments, and now, the human 
locomotives, creased as to their countenances, and pur- 
blind as to their eyes, would swarm forth in a heap, ad- 
dressing themselves to the mysterious urns and the much- 
injured women ; while the iron locomotives, di-ippirig fire 
and water, shed their steam about plentifully, making the 
dull oxen in their cages, with heads depressed, and foam 
hanging from their mouths as their red looks glanced fear- 
fully at the surrounding terrors, seem as though they had 
been drinking at half-frozen waters and were hung with 
icicles. Through the same steam would be caught glimp- 
ses of their fellow-travelers, the sheep, getting their white 
kid faces together, away from the bars, and stuffing the 
interstices with trembling wool. Also, down among the 
wheels, of the man with the sledge-hammer, ringing the 
axles of the fast night-train against whom the oxen have 
a misgiving that he is the man with the pole-axe, who is 
to come by-and-by, and so the nearest of them try to 
back, and get a purchase for a thrust at him through the 
the bars. Suddenly the bell would ring, the steam would 
stop with one hiss and a yell, the chemists on the bean- 
stalks would be busy, the avenging Furies would bestir 
themselves, and the fafrt night-trains would melt from eye 
11 


240 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


and ear, the other trains going their ways more slowly, 
would be heard faintly rattling in the distance like old- 
fashioned watches running down, the sauce-bottle and 
cheap music retired from view, even the bedstead went 
to bed, and there was no such visible thing as the Station 
to vex the cool wind, in its blowing, or perhaps the 
autumn lightning, as it found out the iron rails. 

The infection of the Station was this ; — When it was 
in its raving state, the Apprentices found it impossible to 
be there, without laboring under the delusion that they 
were in a hurry. To Mr. Goodchild, whose ideas of idle- 
• ness were so imperfect, this was no unpleasant hallucin- 
ation, and, accordingly, that gentleman went through great 
exertions in yielding to it, and running up and down the 
platform, jostling everbody, under the impression that he 
had a highly important mission somewhere, and had not 
a moment to lose. But, to Thomas Idle, this contagion 
was so very unacceptable an incident of the situation, 
that he struck on the fourth day, arid requested to be 
removed. 

This place fills me with a dreadful sensation,’' said 
Thomas, “ of having something to do. Remove me, 
Francis. ” 

“ Where would you like to go next ? ” was the question 
of the ever engaging Goodchild. 

“ I have heard there is a good old Inn at Lancaster, 
established in a fine old house : an Inn where they give 
you Bride-cake every day after dinner,” said Thomas 
Idle. Let us eat Bride-cake witliout the trouble of 
being married, or of knowing anybody in tliat ridiculous 
dilemma.” 

Mr. Goodchild, with a lover’s sigh, assented. They 
departed from the Station in a violent hurry (for which 
it is unnecessary to observe, there was not the least occa- 
sion), and were delivered at the fine old house at Lancas- 
ter, on the same night. 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


241 


It is Mr. Goodchild’s opinion, that if a visitor on his 
arrival at Lancaster could be accommodated with a pole 
which would push the opposite • side of the street some 
yards farther off, it would be better for all parties. Pro- 
testing against being required to live in a trench, and 
obliged to speculate all day upon what the people can 
possibly be doing within a mysterious opposite window, 
which is a shop window to look at, but not a shop window 
in respect of its offering nothing for sale and declining to 
s^ive anv account whatever of itself, Mr. Goodchild 
concedes Lancaster to be a pleasant place. A place 
dropped in the midst of a charming landscape, a place 
with a fine ancient fragment of castle, a place of lovely 
walks, a place possessing staid old houses richly fitted 
with old Honduras mahogany, which has grown so dark 
with time that it seems to have got something of a retro- 
spective mirror quality into itself, and to show the visitor, 
in the depths of its grain, through all its polish, the hue 
of the wretched slaves who groaned long ago under old 
Lancaster merchants. And Mr. Goodchild adds that the 
stones of Lancaster do sometimes whisper, even .yet, of 
rich men passed away — upon whose great prosperity some 
of these old doorways frowned sullen in the brightest 
weather — that their slave-gain turned to curses, as the 
Arabian Wizard’s money turned to leaves, and that no 
good ever came of it, even unto the third and fourth gene- 
rations,. until it was wasted and gone. 

It was a gallant sight to behold, the Sunday procession 
of the Lancaster elders to Church — all in black, and 
looking fearfully like a funeral without the Body under 
(he escort of Three Beadles. 

Think,”,said Francis, as he stood at the Inn window, 
admiring, “ of being taken to the sacred edifice by three 
Beadles ! I have, in my early time, been taken out of it 
by one Beadle ; but to be taken into it by three, 0 Thomas, 
is a distinction I shall never enjoy 1 


242 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


CHAPTER THE FOURTPL 

W HEN Mr. G Godchild had looked out of the Lan* 
caster Inn-window for two hours on end, with great 
perseverance, he began to entertain a misgiving that he 
was growing industrious. Pie therefore set himself next, 
to explore the country from the tops of all the steep hills 
in the neighborhood. 

He came back at dinner-time, red and glowing, to tell 
Thomas Idle what he had seen. Thomas, on his back 
reading, listened with great composure, and asked him 
whether he really had gone up those hills, and bothered 
himself with those views, and walked all those miles r 
“ Because I want to know,’’ added Thomas, “ what you 
would say of it, if you were obliged to do it ? ” 

“ It would.be different then,” said Francis. “ It would 
be work, then ; now, it’s play.”^ 

“ Play !” repeated Thotoas Idle, utterly repudiating the 
reply. “ Play ! Here is a man goes systematically tearing 
himself to pieces, and putting himself through an incessant 
course of training, as if he were always under articles to 
fight a match for the champion’s belt, and he calls it Play ! 
Play !” exclaimed Thomas Idle, scornfully contemj^lating 
his one boot in the air. “ You cavbt play. You don’t 
know what it is. You make work of everything.” 

The bright Goodchild amiably smiled. 

“ So you do,” said Thomas, “ I mean it. To me, you 
are an absolutely terrible fellow. You do nothing like 
another man. Where^ another fellow would fall into a 
footbath of action or emotion you fall into a mine. Where 
any other fellow would be a painted butterfly, you are a 
fiery dragon. Where another man would stake a sixpence, 
you stake your existence. If you were to go up in a bal- 
loon, you would make for Heaven ; and if you were to dive 
into the depths of tlie earth, nothing short of the other 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


243 


place would content you. What a fellow you are, 
Francis ! ” 

The cheerful Goodchild laughed. 

‘‘ It’s all very well to laugh, but I wonder you don’t feci 
it to be serious said Idle. ‘‘ A man who can do nothing 
by halves appears to me to be a fearful man. 

“ Tom, Tom,” returned Goodchild, ‘‘ If I can do noth- 
ing by halves, and be nothing by halves, it’s pretty clear 
that you must take me as a whole and make the best of 
me.” 

With this philosophical rejoinder, the airy Goodchild 
clapped Mr. Idle on the shoulder in a final manner, and 
they set down to dinner. 

By the bye,” said Goodchild, I have been over a lu- 
natic asylum too, since I have been out.” 

“ He has been,” exclaimed Thomas Idle, casting 
up his eyes, “ over a lunatic asylum ! Not content with 
being as great an Ass as Captain Barclay in the pedes- 
trian way, he makes a Lunacy Commissioner of himself 
— for nothing ! ” 

An immense place,” said Goodchild, admirable 
offices, very good arrangements, very good attendants ; 
altogether a remarkable place.” 

And what did you see there ? ” asked Mr. Idle, 
adapting Hamlet’s advice to the occasion, and assuming 
the virtue of interest, though he had it not. 

‘‘The usual thing,” said Francis Goodchild, with a 
sigh. “ Long groves of blighted men-and-women-trees ; 
interminable avenues of hopeless faces ; numbers without 
the slightest power of really combining for any earthly 
purpose ; a society of human creatures who have noth- 
ing in common but that they have all lost the power of 
being humanly social with one another.” 

“ Take a glass of wine with me,” said Thomas Idle, 
“ and let us be social.” 


214 - 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


‘‘ lu one gallery, Tom,” pursued Francis Goodcliild, 

« which looked to me about the length of the Long A\ alk 
at Windsor, more or less — ” 

Probably less,” observed Thomas Idle. 

In one gallery, which was otherwise quite clear of 
patients (for they were all out), there was a poor little 
dark-chinned, meagre man, with a perplexed brow and a 
pensive face, stooping low over the matting on the floor, 
and picking out with his thumb and fore-finger the course 
of its fibres. The afternoon sun was slanting in at the large 
end-window, and there were cross patches of light and 
shade all down the vista, made by the unseen windows 
and the open doors of the little sleeping cells on either 
side. In about the centre of the perspective, under an 
arch, regardless of the pleasant weather, regardless of the 
solitude, regardless of approaching footsteps, was the poor 
little dark-chinned, meagre man, poring over the matting. 

‘ What are you doing there ? said my conductor when we 
came to him. He looked up and pointed to the matting. I 
wouldn’t do that, I think,’ said my conductor, kindly ; ‘ if 
I were you, I would go and read, or I would lie down 
if I felt tired; but I wouldn’t do that.’ — The patient con- 
sidered a moment and vacantly ans ward, ‘ hs o, sii , I 
won’t ; I’ll — ril go and read,’ and so he lamely shufiled 
away into one of the little rooms. I turned my head be- 
fore we had gone many paces. He had already come 
out again, and was again poring over the matting, and 
tracking out its fibres with his thumb and fore-finger. I 
stopped to look at him, and it came into my mind, that 
probably the course of those fibres as they plaited in 
and out, over and under, was the only course of things in 
the whole wide world that it was left to him to under- 
stand — that his darkening intellect had narrowed down 
to the small cleft of light which showed him, ‘ This piece 
was twisted tliis way, went in here, passed under, came 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


245 


ont tiicre, was carried on away here to the right where I 
now put my finger on it, and in this progress of evenls, 
tiie thing was made and came to be here.’ Then I won- 
dered whether he looked into the matting, next, to see if it 
could show him anything of the jirocess through wlrich lie 
came to be there, so strangely poring over it. Then, I 
thought how all of us, God help us ! in our different ways 
are poring over our bits of matting, blindly enough, and 
what confusions and mysteries we make in the pat- 
tern. I had a sadder fellow-feeling with the little dark- 
chinned, meagre man, by that time, and I came away.” 

Mr. Idle diverting the conversation to grouse, custards, 
and bride-cake, Mr. Goodchild followed in the sarne direc- 
tion. The bride-cake was as bilious and indigestible as if 
a real Bride had cut it, and the dinner it completed, was 
an admirable performance. 

The house was a genuine old house of a very quaint des- 
cription, teeming with old carvings, and beams, and pan- 
els, and having an excellent old staircase, with a gallery 
or upper staircase, cut off from it by a curious fence-work 
of old oak, or of the old Honduras mahogany wood. It 
was, and is, and will be, for many a long year to come, a 
remarkably picturesque house ; and a certain grave myster^C 
lurking in the depth of the old mahogany panels, as if they 
were so many deep pools of dark water — such, indeed, as 
they had been much among when they were trees — ^gave 
it a very mysterious character after nightfall. 

When Mr. Goodchild and Mr. Idle had first alighted at 
the door, and stepped into the sombre handsome old hall, 
they had been received by half-a-dozen noiseless old men 
in black, all dressed exactly alike, who glided up the stairs 
with the obliging landlord and waiter — but without appear- 
ing to get into their way, or to mind whether they did or 
no — and who had filed off to the right and left on the old 
staircase as the guests entered tlieir sitting-room. It was 


246 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


then broad, bright day. But, Mr. Goodchild had said, 
when their door was shut, “ Who on earth are these old 
men ? ” And afterwards, both on going out and coming 
in, he had noticed that there were no old men to be seen. 

Neither had the old men, or any one of the old men, 
reappeared since. The two friends had passed a night in 
the house, but had seen nothing more of the old men. Mr. 
Goodchild, in rambling about it, had looked along pas- 
sages, and glanced in at doorways, but had encountered no 
old men ; neither did it appear that any old men were, by 
any member of the establishment, missed or expected. 

Another odd circumstance impressed itself on their at- 
tention. It was, that the door of their sitting-room was 
never left untouched for a quarter of an hour. It was 
opened with hesitation, opened with confidence, opened a 
little way, opened a good way, always clapped to again 
without a word of explanation. They were reading, they 
were writing, they were eating, they were drinking, they 
were talking, they were dozing ; the door was always open- 
ed at an unexpected moment, and they looked towards it, 
and it was clapped to again, and nobody was to be seen. 
When this had happened fifty times or so, Mr. Goodchild 
had said to his companion, jestingly : ‘‘ I begin to think, 
Tom, there was something wrong about those six old 
men.^^ 

Night had come again, and they had been writing for 
two or three hours : writing, in short, a portion of the lazy 
notes from which these lazy sheets are taken. They had 
left off writing, and glasses were on the table between 
them. The house was closed and quiet, and the town was 
quiet. Around the head of Thomas Idle, as he lay upon 
liis sofa, hovered light wreaths of fragrant smoke. The 
temples of Francis Goodchild, as he leaned back in his 
chair, with his two hands clasped behind his head, and his 
legs crossed, were similarly decorated. 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


247 


They had been discussing several idle subjects of spec- 
ulation, not omitting the strange old men, and were still 
so occupied, when Mr. Goodchild abruptly changed his 
attitude to wind up his watch. They were just becoming 
drowsy enough to be stopped in their talk by any such 
slight check. Thomas Idle, who was speaking at the mo- 
ment, paused and said, “ How goes it ? ’’ 

‘‘ One, ’’ said Goodchild. 

As if he had ordered One old man, and the order were 
promptly executed (truly, all orders were so, in that excel- 
lent hotel), the door opened, and One old man stood there. 

He did not come in, but stood with the door in his 
hand. 

One of the six, Tom, at last ! ” said Mr. Goodchild, in 
a surprised whisper.— ‘‘ Sir, your pleasure ? 

“ Sir, your pleasure ? ” said the One old man. 

I didn't ring. " 

‘‘ The Bell did, ” said the One old man. 

He said Bell, in a deep strong way, that would have 
expressed the church Bell. 

“ I had the pleasure, I believe, of seeing you, yester' 
day ? " said Goodchild. 

“ I cannot undertake to say for certain, '' was the grim 
reply of the One old man. 

“ I think you saw me ? Did you not ? " 

“ Saw you said the old man. “ Oh, yes, I saw you. 
But, I see many who never see me. ” 

A chilled, slow, earthy, fixed old man. A cadaverous 
old man of measured speech. An old man who seemed as 
unable to wink, as if hk eyelids had been nailed to his 
forehead. An old man whose eyes-^two spots of fire — 
had no more motion than if they had been connected with 
the back of his skull by screws driven through it, and riv- 
eted and bolted outside, among his giay hair. 

The night had turned so cold, to Mr. Goodchild's sensa- 


248 


THE LAZY TOUR OP 


tions, that he shivered. He remarked lightly, and half 
logetically, ‘‘ I think somebody is walking over my grave. * 

“ No, ’’ said the weird old man, “ there is no one there.” 

Mr. Goodchild looked at Idle, but Idle lay with his head 
cn^Yreathed in smoke. 

‘‘ No one there ? ” said Goodchild. 

“ There is no one at your grave, I assure you, ” said the 
old man. 

He had come in and shut the door, and he now sat 
down. He did not bend himself to sit, as other people do, 
but seemed to sink bolt upright, as if in water, until the 
chair stopped him. 

‘‘ My friend, Mr. Idle, ” said Goodchild, extremely anx- 
ious to, introduce a third person into the conversation. 

“I am,” said the old man, without looking at him, 
“ at Mr, Idle’s service.” 

If you are an old inhabitant of this place,” Francis 
Goodchild resumed : 

“ Yes.” 

— Perhaps you can decide a point my friend and I were 
in doubt upon, this morning. They hang condemned 
criminals at the Castle, I believe ? ” 

I believe so,” said the old man. 

Are their faces turned towards that noble prospect ? ” 

“ Your face is turned,” replied the old man, “ to the 
Castle wall. When you are tied up, you see its stones 
expanding and contracting violently, and a similar expan- 
sion and contraction seem to take place in your own head 
and breast. Then, there is a rush of fire and an earth- 
quake, and the Castle springs into the air, and you tumble 
down a precipice.” * 

His cravat appeared to trouble him. He put his hand 
to his throat, and moved his neck from side to side. 
He was an old man of a swollen character of face and 
his nose was immovably hitched up on one side, as if by 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


249 


a little liook inserted in the nostril. Mr. Goodchild felt 
exceedingly uncomfortable, and began to think the night 
was hot, and not cold. 

‘‘ A strong description, sir,” he observed. 

“ A strong sensation,” the old man rejoined. 

Again, Mr. Goodchild to Mr. Thomas Idle ; but, Thom- 
as lay on his back with his face attentively turned towards 
the One old man, and made no sign. At this time, Mr. 
Goodchild believed that he saw two threads of fire stretch 
from the old man’s eyes to his own, and there attach them- 
selves. ( Mr. Goodchild writes the present account of 
his experience, and with the utmost solemnity, protests 
that he had the strongest sensation upon him of being 
forced to look at the old man along those two fiery films- 
from that moment.) 

‘‘ I must tell it to you,” said the old man, with a ghast, 
ly and a stony stare. 

What ? ” asked Francis Goodchild. 

You know where it took place. Yonder ! ” 

Whether he pointed to the room above, or to the room 
below, or to any room in that old house, or to a room in 
some other old house in that old’ town, Mr. Goodchild 
was not, nor is, nor ever can be, sure. He was confused 
by the circumstance that the right fore-finger of the One 
old man seemed to dip itself in one of the threads of fire, 
light itself, and make a fiery start in the air, as it pointed 
somewhere. — Having pointed somewhere, it went out. 

You know she was a Bride,” said the old man., 

“I know they still send up Bride-cake,” Mr. Goodchild 
faltered. ‘‘ This is a very oppressive air.” 

“ She was a bride,” said the old man. “ She was a fair, 
flaxen-haired, large eyed girl, who had no character, no 
purpose. A weak, credulous, incapable, helpless nothing. 
Not like her mother. No, no. It was her father whose 
character she reflected. 


250 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


• ‘‘ Her motlier had taken care to secure everything to 

herself, for her own life, when the father of this girl ( a 
child at that time) died — :of sheer helplessness ; no other 
disorder — and then He renewed the acquaintance that had 
once subsisted between the mother and him. He had 
been put aside for the flaxen-haired, large-eyed man ( or 
nonentity) with Money. He could overlook that for 
Money. He wanted compensation in Money. 

“ So, he returned to the side of that woman the mother, 
made love to her again, danced attendance on lier, and 
submitted himself to her whims. She wreaked upon him 
every whim she had, or could invent. He bore it. And 
the more he bore, the more he wanted compensation in 
Money, and the more he was resolved to have it. 

‘‘ But lo ! Before he got it, she cheated him. In one 
of her imperious states, she froze, and never thawed 
again. She put her hands to her head one night, uttered 
a cry, stiffened, lay in that attitude certain hours, and 
died. And he had got no compensation from her in 
Money, yet. Blight and Murrain on her ! Not a penny. 

“ He had hated her throughout that second pursuit, and 
had longed for retaliation on her. He now counterfeited 
her signature to an instrument, leaving all she had to 
leave, to her daughter — ten years old then — to whom the 
property passed absolutely, and appointing himself the 
daughter’s Guardian. When He slid it under the pillow 
of the bed on which she lay. He bent down in the deaf 
ear of D^ath, and whispered : ‘ Mistress Pride, I have de- 
termined a long time that, dead or aliye, you must make 
compensation in Money.’ 

‘‘ So, now there were only two left. Which two' were, 
.He, and the fair flaxen-haired, large-eyed foolish daugli- 
ter, who afterwards became the Bride. 

He put her to school. In a secret, dark, oppressive, 
ancient house, he put her to school with a watchful and 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


251 


unscrupulous woman. — VMy worthy lady/ he said, ‘ here 
is a mind to be formed ; will you help me to form it ? ’ 
She accepted the trust. For which she, too, wanted com- 
pensation in Mofiey, and had it. 

The girl was formed in the fear of him, and in the 
conviction, that there was no escape from him. She was 
taught, from the first, to regard him as her future husband 
— the man who must marry her — the destiny that over- 
shadowed her — the appointed certainty that could never 
be evaded. The poor fool was soft white wax in their 
hands, and took the impression that they put upon her. 
It hardened with time. It became a part of herself. In 
separable from herself, and only to be torn away from 
her, by tearing life away from her. 

“ Eleven years she lived in the dark house and its 
gloomly garden. He was jealous of the very light and air 
getting to h^r, and they kept her close. He stopped the 
wide chimneys, shaded the little windows, left the strong 
stemmed ivy to wander where it would over the house front, 
the moss to accumulate on the un trimmed fruit trees in the 
red walled garden, the weeds to over-run its green and 
yellow walks. He surrounded her with images of sorrow 
and desolation. He caused her to be filled with fears of 
the place and of the stories that were told of it, and 
then on pretext of correcting them, to be left in 
it in solitude, or made shrink about it in the dark. When 
her mind was most depressed and fullest of terrors, then, 
he would come out of one of the hiding-places from which 
he overlooked her, and present himself as her sole re- 
source. 

“ Thus, by being from her childhood the one embodi- 
ment her life presented to her of power to coerce and 
power to relieve, power to bind and power to lose, the 
ascendency over her weakness was secured. She was 
twenty-one years and twenty-one clays old, when he brought 


252 


THK LAZY TOUR OF 


her home to the gloomy house, his half-witted, frightened, 
and submissive Bribe of three weeks. 

“ He had dismissed the governess by that time — what 
he had left to do, he coiild best do alone— and they came 
back, upon a rainy night, to the scene of her long prepara* 
tion. She turned to him upon the thre&hold, as the rain 
was dripping from the porch, and said : — 

“ ^ Oh sir, it is the Death watch ticking for me ! ’ 

‘‘ ‘ Well,’’ he answered. ‘ And if it were ? ’ 

“ Oh, sir !’ she returned to him, ‘ look kindly on me, and 
be merciful to me ! I beg your pardon. I will do any- 
thing you wish, if you will only forgive me ! ’ 

“ That had become the poor fool’s constant song : ‘ I 
beg your pardon,’ and ‘ Forgive me ! ’ 

“ She was not worth hating ; he felt nothing but con- 
tempt for her. But, she had long been in the way, and 
he had long been weary, and the work was near its end, 
and had to be. worked out. 

‘ You fool,’ he said, ‘ go up the stairs ! ’ 

‘‘ She obeyed very quickly, murmuring, ‘ I will do any- 
thing you wish ! ’ When he came into the Bride’s Cham- 
ber, having been a little retarded by the heavy fastenings 
of the great door (for they were alone in the house, and 
he had arranged that the people who attended, on them 
should come and go in the day), he found her withdrawn 
to the farthest corner, and there standing pressed against 
the panelling as if she would have pressed through it : her 
flaxen hair all wild about her face, and her large eyes 
staring at him in vague terror. 

“ ‘ What are you afraid of ? Come and sit down by 
me.’ 

“ ‘ I will do anything you wish. I beg your pardon, sir. 
Forgive me ! ’ Her monotonous tune as usual. 

‘‘ ‘ Ellen, here is a writing that you must write out to- 
morrow, in your own hand. You may as well be seen by 
others, busilv enijaged upon it. When you have written all 


TWO IDLE ArPRENTICKS. 


253 


fairly, and corrected all mistakes, call in any two people 
ihere may be about the house, and sign your name to it be- 
fore them. Then, put it in your bosom to keep it safe, and 
when I sit here again to-morrow night, give it to me.’ 

‘ I will do it all, with the greatest care. I will do any- 
thing you wisli.’ 

^ Don’t shake and tremble then.’ 

‘ I will try my utmost not to do it — if you will only 
forgive me ! ’ 

‘‘ Next day, she sat down at her desk, and did as she 
had been told. He often passed in and out of the room, 
to observe her, and always saw her slowly and laboriously 
writing : repeating to herself the words she copied, in ap- 
pearance quite mechanically, and without caring or en- 
deavoring to comprehend them, so that she did her task. 
He saw her follow the directions she had received, in all 
particulars ; and at night, when they were alone again in 
the same Bride’s Chamber, and he drew his chair to the 
hearth, she timidly approached him from her distant seat, 
took the paper from her bosom, and gave it into his hand. 

“ It secured all her possessions to him, in the event of 
her death. He put her before him face to face, that he 
might look at her steadily ; and he asked her, in so many 
plain words, neither fewer nor more, did she know that ? 

“ There were spots of ink upon the bosom of her white 
dress, and they made her face look whiter, and her eyes 
look larger as she nodded her head. There were spots of 
ink upon the hand with which she stood before him, ner- 
vously plaiting and folding her white skirts. 

“ He took her by the arm, and looked her, yet more 
closely and steadily, in the face. ‘ Now, die ! I have done 
with you.’ 

‘‘ She shrunk and uttered a low, suppressed cry. 

‘ I am not going to kill you. I will not endanger 
my life for yours. Die ! ’ 

He sat before her in the gloomy Bride’s Chamber, day 


254 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


after day, night after night, looking the word at her when 
he did not utter it. As often as her large unmeaning eyes 
were raised from the hands in which she rocked her head, 
to the stern figure, sitting with crossed arms and knitted 
forehead, in the chair, they read in it, ‘ Die ! ’ When she 
dropped asleep in exhaustion, she was called back to shud- 
dering consciousness by the whisper, ‘ Die ! * W hen she 
fell upon her old entreaty to be pardoned, she was an- 
swered, ‘ Die ! ’ When she had out- watched and out-suf- 
fered the long night, and the rising sun flamed into the 
s(»mbre room, she heard it hailed with, ‘Another day and 
not dead ? — Die !’ 

“ Shut up in the deserted mansion, aloof from all man- 
kind, and engaged alone in such a struggle without any 
respite, it came to this that either he must die, or she. 
lie knew it very well, and concentrated his strength against 
her feebleness. Hours upon hours, he held her by the arm 
when her arm was black where he held it,and bade her Die 1 

“ It was done, upon a windy morning, before sunrise. 
He computed the time to be half -past four ; but, his for- 
gotten watch had run down, and he could not be sure. 
She had broken away from him in the night, with loud 
and sudden cries — the first of that kind to which she had 
given vent — and he had had to put his hands over her 
mouth. Since then, she had been quiet in the corner of 
the panelling where she had sunk down ; and he had left 
her, and had gone back with his folded arms and his knit- 
ted forehead to his chair. 

“ Paler in the pale light, more colorless than ever in 
the leaden dawn, he saw her coming, trailing herself along 
the floor towards him — a white wreck of hair, and dress, 
and wild eyes pushing itself on by an irresolute and bend- 
ing hand. 

“ ‘ O, forgive me ! I will do anything. O, sir, pray 
tell me I may live I 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


255 


“ ‘ Di( ! ’ 

“ ‘ Are you so resolved ? Is there no hope for me ? ^ 
Die ! ’ 

Her large eyes strained themselves with wonder and 
fear ; wonder and fear changed to reproach ; reproach to 
blank nothing. It was done. He was not at first so 
sure it was done, but that the morning sun was hanging 
jewels in her hair — he saw the diamond, emerald, and 
ruby, glittering among it in her little points, as he stood 
looking down at her — when he lifted her and laid her on 
her bed. 

“ She was soon laid in the ground. And now they 
were all gone, and he had compensated himself well. 

“ He had a mind to travel. Not that he meant to waste 
his Money, for he was a pinching man and liked his Mon- 
ey dearly (liked nothing else, indeed), but, that he had 
grown tired of the desolate house and wished to turn his 
back upon it and have done with it. But the house was 
worth Money, and Money must not be thrown away. 
He determined to sell it before he went. That it 
might look the less wretched and bring a better price, he 
hired some laborers to work in the overgrown garden : 
to cut out the dead wood, trim the ivy that drooped in 
heavy masses over the windows and gables, and clear the 
walks in which the weeds were growing mid-leg high. 

‘‘ He worked, himself, along with them. He worked 
later than they did, and, one evening at dusk, was left 
working alone, with his bill-hook in his hand. One au- 
tumn evening, when the Bride was five weeks dead: 

“ ‘ It grows too dark to work longer,’ he said to him- 
self, ‘ I must give over for the night.’ 

“ He detested the house, and was loath to enter it. 
He looked at the dark porch waiting for him like a tomb, 

and felt that it was an accursed house. Near to the 
11 * 


256 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


porch, and near to where he stood, was a tree whose 
branches waved before the old bay-window of the Bride’s 
Chamber, where it had been done. The tree swung 
suddenly, and made him start. It swung again, although 
the night was still. Looking up into it, he saw a figure 
among the branches. 

‘‘ It was the figure bi a young man. The face looked 
down, as his looked up ; the branches cracked and swayed, 
the figure rapidly descended, and slid upon its feet before 
him. A slender youth of about her age, with long light 
brown hair. 

‘ What thief are you ? ' he said, seizing the youth by 
the collar. 

The young man, in shaking himself free, swung him 
a blow with his arm aross the face and throat. They 
closed, but the young man got from him and stepped back, 
crying, with great eagerness and horror, ‘ Don’t touch 
me ! I would as lieve be touched by the Devil ! ’ 

He stood still, with his bill-hook in his hand, looking 
at the young man. For the young man’s look was the 
counterpart of her last look, and he had not expected ever 
to see that again. 

‘‘ ‘ I am no thief. Even if I were, I would not have a 
coin of your wealth, if it would buy me the Indies. You 
murderer ! ’ 

‘ What ? ’ 

“ ‘I climbed it,’ said the young man pointing up into 
the tree, ‘ for the first time, nigh four years ago. I 
climbed it to look at her. I saw her. I spoke to her. 
I have climbed it, many a time, to watch and listen for 
her. I was a boy, hidden among its leaves, when from 
that bay-window she gave me this ! ’ 

He showed a tress of flaxen hair, tied with a mourn- 
ing ribbon. 

‘ Her life,’ said the young man, ‘ was a life of mourn- 


TWO IDLE ArrRENTICES. 


257 


ing. She gave me this, as a token of it, and a sign that 
she was dead to every one bnt you. If I had been older, 
if I had seen her sooner, I might have saved her from 
you. But, she was fast in the web when I first climbed 
the tree, and what could I do then to break it ! ’ 

“ In saying those words, he burst into a fit of sobbing 
and crying : weakly at first, then passionately. 

‘‘‘Murderer! I climbed' the tree on the night when 
you brought her back. I heard her, from the tree, speak 
of the Death-watch at the door. I was three times in the 
tree while you were shut up with her, slowly killing her. 
I saw her from the tree, lie dead upon her bed. I have 
watched you, from the tree, for proofs and traces of your 
guilt. The manner of it, is a mystery to me yet, but I 
will pursue you until you have rendered up your life to 
the hangman. You shall never, until then, be rid of me. 
I loved her I I can know no relenting towards you. 
Murderer, I loved her 1 ’ 

“ The youth was bare-headed, his hat having fluttered 
away in his descent from the tree*. He moved towards 
the gate. He had to pass— Him — to get to it. There 
was breadth for two old-fashioned carriages abreast ; and 
the youth’s abhorrence, openly expressed in every feature 
of his face and limb of his body, and very hard to bear, 
had verge enough to keep itself at a distance in. He (by 
which I mean the other) had not stirred hand or foot, 
since he had stood still to look at .the boy. He faced 
round, now, to follow him with his eyes. As the back of 
the bare light-brown head was turned to him, he saw a 
red curve stretch from his hand to it. He knew, before 
he threw the bill-hook, where it had alighted, I say had 
alighted, and not, would alight; for, to his clear percep- 
tion, the thing was doiui before he did it. It cleft the 
head, and it remained there, and the boy lay on his face. 

“ He buried the body in the night, at the foot of the 


258 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


tree. As sood as it was light in the morning, he worked 
at turning up all the ground near the tree, and hacking 
and hewing at the neighboring bushes and under growth. 
When the laborers came, there was nothing suspicious, 
and nothing was suspected. 

But, he had, in a moment, defeated all his precautions 
and destroyed the triumph of the scheme he had so long 
concerted, and so successfully worked out. He had got 
rid of the Bride, and had acquired her fortune without en- 
dangering his life ; but now, for a death by which he had 
gained nothing, he had evermore to live with a rope 
around his neck. 

Beyond this, he was chained to the house of gloom 
and horror, which he could not endure. Being afraid to 
sell it or to quit it, lest discovery should be made, he was 
forced to live in it. He hired two old people, man and 
wife, for his servants ; and dwelt in it, and dreaded it. 
His great difficulty, for a long time, was the garden. 
Whether he should keep it trim, whether he should suffer 
it to fall into its former state of neglect, what would be 
the least likely way of attracting attention to it ? 

He took the middle course of gardening, himself, in 
his evening leisure, and of then calling the old serving- 
man to help him ; but of never letting him work there 
alone. And he made himself an arbor over against the 
tree, where he could sit and see that it was safe. 

“As the seasons changed, and the tree changed, his 
mind perceived dangers that were always changing. In 
the leafy time, he perceived that the upper boughs were 
growing into the form of the young man, that they made 
the shape of him exactly, sitting in a forked branch 
swinging in the wind. In the time of the falling leaves, 
he perceived that they came down from the tree, forming 
tell-tale letters on the path, or that they had a tendency 
to heap tlieniselves into a church -yard-mound above the 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


259 


grnvo. In the winter, when the tree was bare, he per- 
ceived that the boughs swung at him the ghost of the 
blow the young man had given, and that they threatened 
him openly. In the spring, when the sap was mounting 
in the trunk, he asked himself, were the dried-up particles 
of blood mounting with it : to make out more obviously 
this year than last, the leaf-screened figure of the young 
man, swinging in the wind ? 

However he turned his Money over and over, and 
still over. He was in the dark trade, the gold-dust trade, 
and most secret trades that yielded great returns. In ten 
years, he had turned his Money over, so many times, 
that the traders and shippers who had dealings with him, 
absolutely did not lie — for once — when they declared that 
they had increased his fortune Twelve Hundred Per Cent. 

“ He possessed his riches one hundred years ago, when 
people could be lost easily. He had heard who the youth 
was, from hearing of the search that was made after him, 
but, it died away, and the youth was forgotten. 

“ The annual round of changes in the tree had been re- 
peated ten times since the night of the burial at its foot, 
when there was a great thunder-storm over this place. 
It broke at midnight, and raged until morning. The first 
intelligence he had heard from his old serving-man that 
morning, was, that the tree had been struck by lightning. 

It had been riven down the stem, in a very surpris- 
ing manner, and the stem lay in two blighted shafts one 
resting against the house, and one against a porticn of 
the old red garden^wall in which its fall had made a gap. 
The fissure went down the tree to a little above the earth, 
and there stopped. There was great curiosity to see the 
tree, and, with most of his former fears revived, he sat in 
his arbor — grown quite an old man — watching the people 
who came to see it. 

“They quickly began to come, in such dangerous num- 


260 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


bers, that he closed his garden gate and refused to admit 
any more. But there were certain men of science who 
travelled from a distance to examine the tree, and, in an 
evil hour, he let them in— Blight and Murrain on them, 
let them in ! 

‘‘They wanted to dig up the ruin by the roots, and 
closely examine it, and the earth about it. Never, while 
he lived ! They offered money for it. They ! Men of 
science, whom he could have bought by the gross, with a 
scratch of his pen ? He showed them the garden gate 
again, and locked and barred it. 

“ But, they were bent on doing what they wanted to 
do, and they bribed the old serving-man — a thankless 
wretch who regularly complained when he received his 
wages, of being underpaid — and they stole into the garden 
by night with their lanterns, picks, and shovels, and fell 
to at the tree. He was lying in a tun*et-room on the other 
side of the house (the Bride’s Chamber had been unoccu- 
pied ever since), but he soon dreamed of picks and shovels, 
and got up. 

“ Ho came to an upper window on that side whence he 
could see their lanterns, and them, and the loose earth in 
a heap which he had himself disturbed and put back, when 
it was last turned to the air. It was found ! Thgey had 
that minute lighted on it. , Tliey were all bending over it. 
One of them said, ‘ The skull is fractured ; ’ and another, 
‘ See here the clothes and then the first struck in again, 
and said, ‘ A rusty bill-hook ! ’ 

“ He became sensible, next day, that he was already put 
under a strict watch, and that he could go nowhere with- 
out beiim followed. Before a week was out, he was taken 

o 

and kid in hold. The circumstances were gradually piec* 
ed together against him, with a desperate malignity, and 
an appalling ingenuity. But, see the justice of men, and 
how it was extended to him ! He was further accused of 


IDLE APPRENTICES. 


261 


hav^ing poisoned that girl in the Bride’s Chamber. He, 
who had carefully avoided imperilling a hair of his head 
for her, and who had seen her die of her own incapacity ! 

“ There was a doubt for which of the two murders he 
should be first tried ; but, the real one was chosen, and 
he was found Guilty, and cast for Death. Bloodthirsty 
wretches ! They would have made him Guilty of any- 
thing, so set they were upon having his life. 

“ His money could do nothing to save him, and he was 
hanged. I am He, and I was hanged at Lancaster Castle 
with my face to the wall, a hundred years ago ! ” 

At this terrific announcement, Mr. Goodchild tried to 
rise and cry out. But, the two fiery lines extended from 
the old man’s eyes to his own, kept him down, and he 
could not utter a sound. His sense of hearing, howevei*, 
was acute, and he could hear the clock strike Two. No 
sooner had he heard the clock strike Two, than he saw 
before him Two old men ! 

Two. 

The eyes of each, connected with his eyes by two films of 
fire : each, exactly like the other : each, addressing him at 
precisely one and the same instant : each, gnashing the 
same teeth in the same head, with the same twitched nos- 
tril above them, and the same suffused expression around 
it. Two old men. Differing in nothing, equally distinct 
to the sight, the copy no fainter than the original, the sec- 
ond as the first. 

‘‘ At what time,” said the Two old men, did you ar- 
rive at the door below ? ” 

At Six.” 

And there were Six old men upon the stairs ! ” 

Mr. Goodchild having wiped the perspiration from hia 
brow, or tried to do it, the Two old men proceeded in one 
voice, and in the singular number : 

I had been anatomised, but had not yet had my skele 


262 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


ton put together and re-hung on an iron liook, when it be- 
gan to be whispered that the Bride’s Chamber was haunt* 
ed. It was haunted, and I was there. 

We were there. She and I were there. I, in the 
chair upon the hearth ; she, a white wreck again, trailing' 
itself towards me on the floor. But, I was the speaker no 
more. She was the sole speaker now, and the one word 
that she said to me from midnight until dawn was,‘ Live ! ’ 

“ The youth was there, likewise. In the tree outside 
the window. Coming and going in the moonlight, as the 
tree bent and gave. He has ever since, been there ; peep- 
ing in at me in my torment ; revealing to me by snatches, 
in the pale lights and slatey shadows where he comes and 
goes, bareheaded— a bill-hook, standing edgewise in his 
hair. 

“ In the Bride’s Chamber, every night from midnight 
until dawn — one month in the ^ear excepted, as I am going 
to tell you — he hides in the tree, and she comes towards 
me on the floor ; always approaching ; never coming near- 
er ; always visible as if by moonlight, whether the moon 
shines or mo ; always saying, from midnight until dawn, her 
one word, ‘ Live ! ’ 

But, in the month wherein I was forced out of this 
life — this present month of thirty days — the Bride’s 
Chamber is empty and quiet. Not so my old dungeon. 
Not so the rooms where I was -restless and afraid, ten 
years. Both are fitfully haunted then. At One in the 
morning, I am what you saw me when the clock struck 
that hour — One old man. At Two in the morning, I am 
Two old men. At Three, I am Three. By Twelve at 
noon, I am Twelve old men. One for every hundred per 
cent, of old gain. Every one of the Twelve, with Twelve 
times ny old power of suffering and agony. hrom that 
hour until Twelve at night, I, Twelve old men in anguish 
and fearful foreboding, wait for the coming of the execu- 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


263 


tioner. At Twelve at night, I, Twelve old men turned# 
off, swing invisible outside Lancaster Castle, with Twelve 
faces to the wall ! 

Wlien the Bride’s Chamber was first haunted, it was 
known to me that this punishment would never cease, un- 
til I could make its nature, and my story, known to two 
living men together. I waited for the coming of two liv- 
ing men together into the Bride’s Chamber, years upon 
years. It was infused into my knowledge (of the means 
I am ignorant) that if two living men, with their eyes open, 
could be ill the Bride’s Chamber at One in the morning, 
they would see me sitting in .my chair. 

At length, the whispers that the room was spiritually 
troubled, brought two men to try the adventure. I was 
scarcely struck upon the hearth at midnight (I come there 
as if the Lightning blasted me into being), when I heard 
them ascending the s-tairs.* Next, I saw them enter. One 
of them was a bold, gay, active man, in the prime of life, 
some five and forty years of age ; the other, a dozen years 
younger. They brought provisions with them in a basket, 
and bottles. A young woman accompanied them, with 
wood and coals for the lighting of the fire. When she 
had lighted it, tlje bold, gay, active man accompanied her 
along the gallery outside the room, to see her safely down 
the staircase, and came back laughing. 

“He locked the door, examined the chamber, put out 
the contents of the basket on the table before the fire — 
little recking of me, in my appointed station on the hearth 
close to him — and filled the glasses, and ate and drank. 
His companion did the same, and was as cheerful and 
confident as he : though he was the leader. When they 
had supped, they laid pistols on the table, turned to the fire, 
and began to smoke their pipes of foreign make. 

‘^They had travelled together, and had been much to 
gether, and had an abundance of subjects in common. In 


264 


THK LAZY TOUR OF 


# the midst of their talking and laughing, the younger man 
made a reference to the leader’s being always ready for 
any adventure : that one, or any other. He replied in 
these words : 

‘‘ ‘ Not quite so, Dick ; if I am afraid of nothing else, I 
am afraid of myself.’ 

“ His companion seeming to grow a little dull, asked 
him in what sense ? How ? 

“ ‘ Why, thus,’ he returned. ‘ Here is a Ghost to be 
disproved. Well ! I cannot answer for what my fancy 
might do if I were alone here, or what tricks my senses 
might play with me if they had me to themselves. But, 
.in company with another man, and especially with you, 
Dick, I would consent to outface all the Ghosts that w^ere 
ever told of in the universe.’ 

“ ‘ I had not the vanity to sitppose that I was of so 
much importance to-night,’ safd the other. 

“‘Of so much,’ rejoined the leader more seriously 
than he had spoken y^t, ‘ that I would, for the reason I 
have given, on no account have undertaken to pass the 
night here alone.’ 

“ It was within a few minutes of One. The head of the 
younger man had drooped when he mad^e his last remark, 
and it drooped lower now. 

“ ‘ Keep awake, Dick !’ said the leader, gaily. ‘ The 
small hours are the worst.’ 

“ He tried, but his head drooped again. 

“ ‘ Dick ! ’ urged the leader. ‘ Keep awake ! ’ 

“‘I can’t,’ he indistinctly muttered. ‘I don’t know 
what strange influence is stealing over me. I can’t.’ 

“ His companion looked at him with a sudden horror, 
and I, in my different way, felt a new horror also ; for, it 
was on the stroke of One, and I felt that the second 
watcher was yielding to me, and that the curse was upon 
me tliat I must send him to sleep. 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


265 


“ ‘ Get up and walk, Dick/ cried the leader. ‘ Try ! ’ 

“It was in vain to go behind the slumberer’s chair 
and shake him. One o’clock sounded, and I was present 
to the elder man, and he stood transfixed before me. 

“ To him alone, I was obliged to relate my story, with- 
out hope of benefit. To him alone, I was an awful phantom 
making a quite useless confession. I foresee it will ever be 
the same. The two living men together will never come 
to release me. Y/hen I appear, the senses of one of the two 
will be locked in sleep ; he will neither see nor hear me ; 
my communication will ever be made to a solitary listenei, 
and will ever be unserviceable. Woe! Woe! Woe!” 

As the Two old men, with these words, wrung their 
hands, it shot into Mr. Goodchild’s mind that he was in 
the terrible situation of being virtually alone with the 
spectre, and that Mr. Idle’s immovability was explained 
by his having been charmed asleep at One o’clock. In 
the terror of this sudden discovery which produced, an 
indescribable dread, he struggled so hard to get free from 
the four fiery threads, that he snapped them, after he had 
pulled them out to a great width. Being then out of 
bonds, he caught up Mr. Idle from the sofa and rushed 
down stairs with him. 

“ lYhat are you about, Francis ?” demanded Mr. Idle. 
“ My bedroom^ is not down here. What the deuce are 
you carrying me at all for ? I can walk with a stick now. 
I don’t want to be carried. Put me down.” 

Mr. Goodchild put him down in the old hall, and look- 
ed about him Wildly. 

“ What are you doing ? Idiotically plunging at your own 
sex, and rescuing them or perishing in the attempt ? ” asked 
Mr. Idle, in a highly petulant state. 

“ The One old man ! ” cried Mr. Goodchild, distractedly, 
— “ and the Two old men ! ” 

Mr. Idle deigned no other reply than “ The One old 


266 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


woman, I think you mean,” as he began hobbling his way 
back up the staircase, with the assistance of its broad 
balustrade. 

“ I assure you, Tom, ” began Mr. Goodchild, attending 

at his side, that since you fell asleep ” 

Come, I like that ! ” said Thomas Idle, “ I haven’t 
closed an eye ! ” 

With the peculiar sensitiveness on the subject of the 
disgraceful action of going to sleep out of bed, which is 
the lot of all mankind, Mr. Idle persisted in this declara- 
tion. The same peculiar sensitiveness impelled Mr. Good- 
child on being taxed with the same crime, to repudiate it 
with honorable resentment. The settlement of the ques- 
tion of The One old man and The Two old men was thus 
presently complicated, and soon made quite impracticable. 
Mr. Idle said it was all Bride-cake, and fragments, newly 
arranged, of things seen and thought about in the day. 
Mr. Goodchild said how could that be, when he hadn’t 
been asleep, and what right could Mr. Idle have to say so, 
who had been asleep ? Mr. Idle said he had never been 
asleep and never did go to sleep, and that Mr. Goodchild 
as a general rule, was always asleep. They conse- 
quently parted for the rest of the night, at their bedroom 
doors, a little ruffled. Mr. Goodchild’s last words were, 
that he had had, in that real and tangible old sitting-room 
of that real and tangible old Inn (he supposed Mr. Idle 
denied its existence?), every sensation and experience, 
the present record of which is now within a line or two 
of completion ; and that he would write it out and print 
it every word. Mr. Idle returned that he might if he liked 
— and he did like, and has now done it. 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


267 


CHAPTER THE FIFTH. 

T WO of the many passengers by a certain late Sunday 
evening train, IMr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis Good- 
child, yielded up their tickets at a little rotten platform 
(converted into artificial touch-wood by smoke and ashes) 
deep in the manufacturing bosom of Yorkshire. A myste- 
rious bosom it appeared, upon a damp, dark, Sunday night 
dashed through in the train to the music of the wliirliiig 
wheels, the panting of the engine, and the part-singing of 
hu dreds of the third-class excursionists, whose vocal 
efforts bobbed arayound ” from sacred to profane, from 
hymns, to our transatlantic sisters, the Yankee Gal and 
Mairy Anne, in a remarkable way. There seemed to 
have been some large vocal gathering near to every 
lonely station on the line. No town was visible ; no vil- 
lage was visible ; no light was visible ; but a multitude got 
out singing, and a multitude got in singing, and the second 
multitude took up the hymns, and adopted our transatlan- 
tic sisters, and sang of their own egregious wickedness, and 
of their bobbing arayound, and of how, the ship it was 
ready and the wind it was fair and they were beyound 
for the sea, Mairy Anne, until they in their turn became 
a getting-out multitude and was replaced by another get- 
ting in multitude, who did the same. And at every sta- 
tion, the getting-in multitude, with an artistic reference to 
the completeness of their chorus, incessant] 3^ cried, as wdth 
one voice, while scuffling into the carriages, “ We mun 
aa’ gang toogither ! ’’ 

The singing of the multitudes had trailed off as the lone- 
ly places were left and the great towns were neared, and 
the way had lain as silently as a train’s way ever can, 
over the vague black streets of the great gulfs of towns, 
and amon^ tlieir branchless woods of vaofue black chim- 
neys. These towns looked, in the cinderous wet, as though 


268 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


they had one and all been on fire and were jnst put out— 
a dreary and quenched panorama, many miles long. ’ 

Thus, Thomas and Francis got to Leeds : of which en- 
terprising and important commercial centre it may be ob- 
served with delicacy, that you must either like it very 
much or not at all. Next day, the first of the Race-Week, 
they took the train to Doncaster. 

And instantly the character, both of travellers and of 
luggage, entirely changed, and no other business than 
race-business any longer existed on the face of the earth. 
The talk was all of horses and “ John Scott.” Guards 
whispered behind their hands to station-masters, of horses 
and John Scott. Men in cut-away coats and speckled cra- 
vats fastened with peculiar pins, and with the large bones 
of their legs developed under tight trousers, so that they 
should look as much as possible like horses’ legs, paced up 
and down by twos at junction stations, speaking low and 
moodily of horses and John Scott. The young clergyman 
in the black strait-waistcoat, who occupied the middle seat 
of the carriage, expounded in his peculiar pulpit-accent to 
the young and lovely Reverend Mrs. Crinoline, who occu- 
pied the opposite middle-seat, a few passages of rumor 
relative to “ Oartheth, my love, and Mithter John Eth- 
COTT.” A bandy vagabond, with a head like a Dutch 
cheese, in a fustian stable-suit, attending on a horse box, 
and going about the platforms with a halter hanging round 
his neck like a Calais burgher of the ancient period much 
degenerated, was courted by the best society, by reason 
of what he had to hint, when not engaged in eating straw, 
concerning “ t’harses and John Scott.” The engine-driv- 
er himself, as he applied one eye to his large station- 
ary double-eye-glass on the engine, seemed to keep the 
other open, sideways upon the horses and John Scott. 

Breaks and barriers at Doncaster station to keep the 
crowd off; temporary wooden avenues of ingress and 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


269 


egress, to help the crowd on. Forty extra porters sent 
down for this present blessed Race-Week, and all of them 
making up their betting books in the lamp-room or some- 
where else, and none of them to come and touch the lug- 
gage. Travellers disgorged into an open space, a howling 
wilderness of Idle men. All work but race work at a 
standstill ; all men at a standstill. “ Ey my word ! Deant 
ask noon o’ us to help wi’ t’ luggage. Bock your opinion 
loike a mon. Coom ! Dang it, coom, t’harses and J oon 
Scott !” In , the midst of the idle men, all the fly horses 
and omnibus horses of Doncaster and parts adjacent, ram- 
pant, rearing, backing, plunging, shying— apparently the 
result of their hearing of nothing but their own order and 
John Scott. 

Grand Dramatic Company frjm London for the Race- 
We'ek. Poses Plastiques in the Grand Assembly Room 
up the Stable-Yard at seven and nine each evening, for 
the Race-Week. — Grand Alliance Circus in the field be- 
yond the bridge, for the Race-Week. Grand Exhibition 
of Aztec Lilliputians, important to all who want to be 
horrified cheap, for the Race- Week. Lodgings, grand and 
not grand, but all at grand prices, ranging from ten 
pounds to twenty, for the Grand Race-Week ! 

Rendered giddy enough by these things. Messieurs Idle 
and Goodchild repaired to the quarters they had secured 
beforehand, and Mr. Goodchild looked down from the 
window into the surging street. 

By heaven, Tom! ” cried he, after contemplating it, 

I am in the Lunatic Asylum again, and these are all 
mad people under the charge of a body of designing keep 
ers I” 

All through the Race- Week, Mr. Goodchild never di- 
gested himself of this idea. Every day he looked out of 
the window, with something of the (bead oi Leinind Gul- 
liver looking down at men after he riUnrned honui Ironi 


270 


THE LAZY TOUK OF 


the liorse-couiitr}^ ; and every day lie saw the Lunatics^ 
horse-mad, betting-mad, drimken-mad, vice-mad, and 
the designing Keepers always after them. The idea per- 
vaded, like the second colour in shot-silk, the whole of 
Mr. Goodchild’s impression. They were much as follows : 

Monday, mid-day. Kaces not to begin until to-morrow, 
but all the mob-Lunatics out, crowding the pavements of 
the one main street of pretty and pleasant Doncas-ter, 
crowding the road, particularly crowding the outside of 
the Betting Room, whooping and shouting • loudly after 
all passing vehicles. Frightened lunatic horses occasion- 
ally running away, with infinite clatter. All degrees of 
men, from peers to paupers, betting incessantly. Keepers 
are very watchful, and taking all good chances. An aw- 
ful family likeness amoi^g the Keepers, to Mr. Palmer 
and Mr. Thurtell. With some knowledge of expres-sioji 
and some acquaintance with heads (thus writes Mr. Good- 
child), I never have seen anywhere, so many representa- 
tions of one class of countenance and one character of 
head (both evil) as in this street at this time. Cunning, 
covetousness, secresy, cold calculation, hard callousness 
and dire insensibility, are the uniform Keeper character- 
istics. Mr. Palmer passes me five times in live minutes, 
and, as I go down the street, the back of Mr. Thurtell’s 
skull is always going on before me. 

Monday evening. Town lighted up ; more lunatics out 
than ever ; a complete choke and stoppage of the tliorough- 
fare outside the Betting Rooms. Keepers, having dined, 
pervade the Betting Rooms, and sharply snap at the mon- 
eyed Lunatics. Some Keepers flushed with drink, and 
some not, but all close and calculating. A vague echo- 
ing roar of “ t’harses and “ t’races ’’ always rising in 
the air, until midnight, at about which period it dies away 
in occasional drunken songs and straggling yells. But 
all night, some unmannerly drinking house in the neighbor- 


TWO IDLE ArPKENTlCES. 


271 


hood opens its mouth at intervals and spits out a man too 
drunk to be retained : who thereupon makes what uproar- 
ious protest may be left in him, and either falls asleep 
wliere he tumbles, or is carried off in custody. 

Tuesday morning, at daybreak. A sudden rising, as it 
were out of the earth, of all tho obscene creatures, who 
sell correct cards of the races.'’ They may have been 
coiled in corners, or sleeping on door-steps, and, having 
all passed the night under the same set of circumstances, 
may all want to circulate their blood at the same time ; 
but, however that may be, they sprang into existence all 
at once and together, as thongh a new Cadmus had sown 
a race-horse’s teeth. There is nobody up, to buy the 
cards; but, the cards are madly cried, ^here is no 
patronage to quarrel for; but, they madly quarrel and 
fight. Conspicuons among these hyeenas, as breakfast- 
time discloses, is a fearful creature in the general sem- 
blance of a man ; shaken off his next-to-no legs by drink 
and devilry, bare-headed and bare-footed, with a great 
shock of hair like a horrible broom, and nothing on him 
but a ragged pair of trousers and a pink glazed-calico 
coat — made on him — so very tight that it is as evident 
that he could never take it off, as that he never does. 
This hideous apparition, inconceivably drunk, has a terri- 
ble power of making a gong-like imitation of the braying 
of an ass ; which feat requires that he should lay his right 
jaw in his begrimed right paw, double himself up, and 
shake his bray out of himself, with much staggering on 
his next-to-no legs, and much twirling of his horrible 
broom,’ as if it were a mop. From the present minute, 
when he comes in sight holding up his cards to the win- 
dows, and hoarsely proposing purchase to My Lord, Your 
Excellency, Colonel, the Noble Captain, and Your Honor- 
able Worship — from the present minute until the Grand 
Race-Week is finished, at all hours of the morning, even- 


272 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


iiig, day, and night, shall the town reverberate, at capric- 
ious intervals, to the brays of this frightful animal the 
Gong-Donkey. 

No very great racing to-day, so no very great amount 
of vehicles : though there is a good sprinkling, too : from 
farmers’ carts and gigs, to carriages with post-horses and 
to fours-in-hand, mostly coming by the road from York, 
and passing on straight through the main street to the 
Course. A walk in the wrong direction may be a better 
thing for Mr. Goodchild to-day than the Course, so he 
walks in the wrong direction. Everybody gone to the 
races. Only children in the street. Grand Alliance 
Circus deserted ; not one Star-Rider left ; omnibus which 
forms the Pi,y-Place, having on separate panels Pay here 
for the Boxes, Pay here for the Pit, Pay here for the 
Gallery, hove down in a corner and locked up ; nobody 
near the tent but the m.an on his knees on the grass, who 
is making the paper balloons for the Star young gentle- 
man to jump through to-night. A pleasant road, plea- 
santly wooded. No laborers working in the fields ; all 
gone “ t’races.” The few late wenders of their way 
“ t’races, ” who are yet left driving on the road, staro in 
amazement at the recluse who is not going ‘‘ t’races. 
Roadside inn-keeper has gone “ t’races.” Turnpike-man 
has gone “ t’races.” His thrifty wife, washing clothes at 
the toll-house door, is going t’races ” to-morrow. Per- 
haps there may be no one left to take the toll to-morrow ; 
who knows ? Though assuredly that would be neither 
turnpike-like, nor Yorkshire-like. The very wind and 
dust seem to be hurrying “ t’races ” as they briskly pass 
the only way-farer on the road. In the distance, the Rail- 
way Engine, waiting at the town-end, shrieks despairingly. 
Nothing but the difficulty of getting off the Line, re- 
strains that Engine from going “ t’races, ” too, it is very 
clear. 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


273 


At night, more Lunatics out than last night— and more 
Keepers. The latter very active at the Betting Rooms, 
the street in front of which is now impassable. Mr. Ral- 
mer as before. Mr. Thurtell as before. Roar and upioar 
as before ! Gradual subsidence as before. Umannerly 
drinking house expectorates as before. Drunken negro- 
melodists, Gong-donkey, and correct cards in the night. ^ 

On Wednesday morning, the morning of the great St. 
Leger, it becomes appai’ent that there has been a great 
influx since yesterday, both of Lunatics and Keepers. 
The families of the tradesmen over the way are no longer 
within human ken ; their places know them no more ; ten, 
tif teen, and twenty guinea lodgers fill them. At the pastry 
cook’s second-floor window, a Keeper is brushing Mr. 
Thurtell’s hair — thinking it his own. In the wax-chand- 
ler’s attic, another Keeper is putting on Mr. Palmer’s 
braces. In the gunsmith’s nursery, a Lunatic is shaving 
himself. In the serious stationer’s best sitting room, three 
Lunatics are taking a combination-breakfast, praising the 
(coo-k’s) devil, and drinking neat brandy in an atmosphere 
of last midnight’s cigars. No family sanctuary is free from 
our Angelic messengers — we put up at the Angel who 
in the guise of extra waiters for the grand Race-Week, 
rattle in and on': of the most secret chambers of every- 
body’s house, with dishes and tin covers, decanters, soda* 
water bottles, and glasses. An hour later. Down the 
street and up the street, as far as eyes can see and a good 
deal farther, there is a dense crowd ; outside the Betting 
Rooms, it is like a great struggle at a theatre door in the 
the days of theatres ; or at the vestibule of the Spurgeon 
temple— in the days of Spurgeon. An hour latter. Fus- 
ing into this crowd, and somehow getting through it, are 
all kinds of conveyances, and all dinds of foot-passengers ; 
carts, with brick-makers and brick-makeresses jolting up, 
and down on j)laiiks ; drags, witii the needfu’ grooms behind, 


274 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


sitting crossed armed in the needful manner, and slanting 
themselves backward from the soles of their hoots at tlie 
needful angle ; post-boys, in the shining hats and smart 
jackets of the old times when stokers were not ; beautiful 
Yorkshire horsey, gallantly driven by their own breeders 
and masters. Under every pole, and every shaft, and every 
horse, and every wheel as it would seem, the Gong-donkey 
— metalically braying, when not struggling for life, or 
.whipped out of the way. 

By one o’clock, all this stir has gone out of the streets, 
and there is no one left in them but Francis Goodchild. 
Francis Goodchild will not be left in them long ; for he too 
is on his way “t’races.” 

A most beautiful sight, Francis Goodchild finds “t’races” 
to be, when he has left fair Doncaster behind him, and comes 
out on the free course, with its agreeable prospect, its 
quaint Red House oddly changing and turning as Francis 
turns its green grass, and fresh heath. A free course and 
an easy one where F rancis can roll smoothly where he will, 
and can choose between the start, or the coming-in, or the 
turn behind the brow of the hill, or an y-out-of-th e-way 
point where he lists to see the throbbing horses straining 
every nerve, and making the sympathetic earth throb ns 
they come by. Francis much delights to be, not in the 
Grand Stand, but where he can see it rising against the 
sky with its vast tiers of little white dots of faces, and its 
high rows and corners of people, looking like pins siuek 
into an enormous pin-cushion — not quite so symmetrically 
as his orderly eye could wish, when people change or go 
away. When the race is nearly run out, it is as good as 
the race to him to see the flutter among the pins, and the 
change in them from dark to light, as hats are taken off 
and waved. Not less full of interest, the loud anticipa- 
tion of the winner’s name, the swelling, and the final, roar ; 
then, the quick drOp})ing of all the pins out of their placesr 


27o 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 

tht‘ revelation of the shape of the hare pin -cushion, and 
the c]c»sing-in of the whole host of Lunatics and Keepers, 
in the rear of the three horses with bright-coloured riders, 
who have not yet quite subdued their gallop, though tlie 
contest is over. 

Mr. Goodchild would appear to have been by no means 
free from lunacy himself at “tVaces ’’ though not of the pre- 
valent kind. He is suspected by Mr. Idle to have fallen 
int(‘ a dreadful state concerning a pair of little lilac gloves 
and a little bonnet that he saw there. Mr. Idle asserts 
that he did afterwards repeat at the Angel,- with an ap- 
pearance of being lunatically seized, some rhapsody to 
the following effect: “ O little lilac gloves ! And O win- 
ning little bonnet, making in conjunction with her golden 
hair quite a Glory in the sunlight round the pretty head, 
why anything in the world but you and me! Why may 
not this day's running — of horses, to all the rest ; of pre- 
cious sands of life to me — be prolonged through an au- 
tumn-sunshine, without a sunset ! Slave of the Lamp, or 
Ring, strike me yonder gallant equestrian Clerk of the 
Course, in the scarlet coat, motionless on the green grass 
for ages! Friendly Devil on two sticks, for ten times ten 
thousand years, keep Blink-bonny jibbing at the post, and 
let as have no start ! Arab drums, powerful of old to sum- 
mon Genii in the desert, sound of yourselves and raise a 
troop for me in the desert of my heart, which shall so en- 
chant this dusty barouche (with a conspicuous excise-plate 
resembling thp Collector's door-plate at a turnpike), that I 
within it, loving the lilac gloves, the winning little bonnet 
and the dear unknown-wearer with the golden hair, may 
wait by her side for ever, to see a Great St. Leger that 
shall never be run ! " 

Thursday morning. After a tremendous night of cro wd- 
ing, shouting, drinking-house expectoration. Gong-donkey, 
and correct cards. Symptoms of yesterday's gains in the 


THE LAZY TOUK OF 


way of drink, and of yesterday’s losses in the way ol 
money, abundant. Money-losses very ‘;reat. As usual, 
nobody seems to have won ; but, large losses and many 
losers are unquestionable facts. Both Lunatics and Keep- 
ers, in general very low. Several of both kinds look in at 
the chemist’s while Mr. Goodchild is making a purchase 
there, to be picked up.” One red-eyed Lunatic, flushed, 
faded, and disordered, enters hurriedly and cries savagely, 

“ Hond us a gloss of sal volatile in wather, or soom dom- 
med thing o’ thot sart ! ” Faces at the Betting Rooms 
very long, and a tendency to bite nails obseivable. Keep- 
ers likewise given this morning to standing about sol- 
itary, with their hands in their pockets, looking down 
at their boots as they fit them into cracks of the 
pavement, and then looking up whistling and walking 
away. Grand Alliance Circus out, in procession ; buxom 
lady-member of Grand Alliance, in crimson riding-habit, 
fresher to look at, even in her paint under the day sky, 
than the cheeks of Lunatics or Keepers. Spanish Cavalier 
appears to have lost ye.sterday ; and jingles his bossed bridle 
with disgust, as if he were paying. Re-action also aj)- 
parent at the Guildhall opposite, whence certain pickpock- 
ets come out handcuffed together, with that peculiar walk 
which is never seen under any other circumstances — a walk 
expressive of going to jail, game, but still jails being in 
bad taste and arbitrary, and hoAV would you like it if it 
was you instead of me, as it ought to be! Mid-day. 
Town filled as yesterday, but not so full ; and emptied as 
yesterday, but not so empty. In the evening Angel ordinary 
where every Lunatic aiid Keeper has his modest daily 
meal of turtle, venison, and wine, not so crowded as yes- 
terday, and not so noisy. At night the theatre. More 
abstracted faces in it, than one ever sees at public assem- 
blies ; such faces wearing an expression which strongly 
reminds INIr. Goodchild of the boys at school who weie go* 


TWO IDLE ArPRENTICES. 


277 


ing np next, ” with their arithinetic or mathematics. These 
boys are, no do’ibt, goiog up to-morrow with t/ietr suuis 
and figures. Mr. Palmer and Mr. Thurtell in tlie boxes 
O. P. Mr. Thurtell and Mr. Palmer in tiie boxes P. S. 
The firm of Thurtell, Palmer, and Thurtell in the 
boxes Centre. A most odious tendency observable in 
these distinguished gentlemen to put vile constructions on 
sufficiently innocent phrases in the play, and tlien to ap- 
plaud them in a Satyr-like manner. Behind Mr. Good- 
child, with a party of other Lunatics and one Keeper, tlie 
express incarnation of the thing called a ^‘gent.” A 
gentleman bornj a gent manufactured. A something with 
a scarf round its neck, and a slipshod speech issuing from 
behind the scarf ; more depraved, more foolish, more igno- 
rant, more unable to believe in any noble or good thing 
of any kind, than the stupidest Bosjesman. The thing is 
but a boy in years, and is addled with drink. To do its 
company justice, even its company is ashamed of it, as it 
drawls its slang criticisms on the representation, and in- 
flames Mr. Goodchild with a burning ardor to fling it into 
the pit. Its remarks are so horrible, that M r. Goodchild, 
for the moment, even doubts whether that is a wholesome 
Art which sets women apart on a high floor before such a 
thing as this, though as good as its own sisters, or its own 
mother — whom Heaven forgive for bringing it into the 
world ! But, the consideration that a low nature must 
make a low world of its own to live in, whatever the real 
materials, or it could no more exist than any of us could 
witliout the sense of touch, brings Mr. Goodchild to reason ; 
the rather, because the thing soon drops its downy chin 
on its scarf, and slobbers itself asleep. 

Friday Morning. Early fights. Gong-donkey, and cor- 
rect cards. Again, a great set towards the races, though 
not so great a set as on Wednesday. Much packing going 
on too, upstairs at the gunsmith’s, the waxchandler’s, and 


278 


TITK LAZY TOUK Ol' 


tlie serious stationer’s ; for there will be a heavy drift ol 
Lunatics and Keepers to London by the afternoon train. 
The course as pretty as ever ; the great pincushion as like 
a pincushion, but not nearly so full of pins; whole rovfs of 
pins wanting. On the great event of the day, both Lunatics 
and Keepers become inspired with rage ; and there is a 
violent scuffling, and a rushing at the losing jockey, and 
an emergence of the said jockey from a swaying and 
menacing crowd protected by friends, and looking the 
worse for wear ; which is a rough proceeding, though an- 
imating to see from a pleasant distance. After the great 
event, rills begin to flow from the pincushion towards the 
railroad ; the rills swell into rivers ; the rivers soon unite 
into a lake. The lake floats Mr. Goodchild into Doncaster, 
past the Itinerant personage in black by the way-side, tell- 
ing him from the vintage ground of a legibly printed pla- 
card on a pole that for all these things the Lord will 
bring him to judgment. No turtle and venison ordinary 
this evening ; that is all over. No Betting at the rooms ; 
nothing there but the plants in pots, which have all the 
week, been stood about the entry to give it an inno- 
cent appearance, and which have sorely sickened by 
this time. 

Saturday. Mr. Idle wishes to know at breakfast what 
were those dreadful groanings in his bedroom doorway in 
the night? Mr. Goodchild answers. Nightmare. Mr. 
Idle repels the calumny, and calls the waiter. The Angel 
is very sorry — had intended to explain ; but you see, gen- 
tlemen, there was a gentleman dined down stairs with two 
more, and he had lost a deal of money, and he would drink 
a deal of wine, and in the night he “ took the horrors,” and 
got up ; and, as his friends could do nothing with him, he 
laid himself down, and groaned at Mr. Idle’s door. “And 
he DID groan there,” Mr. Idle says ; “ and you will please 
to imagine me inside, ‘ taking the horrors’ too ! ” 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


279 


So far, the picture of Doncaster on the occasion of its great 
. sporting anniversary, offers probably a general represen- 
tation of the social condition of the town, in the past as 
well as in the present time. The sole local phenomenon 
of the current year, which may be considered as entirely 
unprecedented in its way, and which certainly claims, on 
that account, some slight share of notice, consists in the ac- 
tual existence of one remarkable individual, who is so" 
journing in Doncaster, ' and wlio, neither directly or indi- 
rectly, has anything at all to do, in any capacity whatever, 
wdth the racing amusements of the week. Ranging through- 
out the entire crowd that fills the town, and including 
the inhabitants as well as the visitors, nobody is to be 
found altogether disconnected with the business of the day, 
excepting this one unparalleled man. Pie does not bet on 
the races, like the sporting men. He does not assist the 
races, like the jockeys, starters, judges, and grooms. He 
does not look on at tl e races, like Mr. Goodchihl and fel- 
low-spectators. He does not profit by the races, like tlie 
hotel-keepers and the trades-people. He does not minister 
• to the necessities of the races, like the booth-keepers, the 
postillions, the waiters, and the hawkers of Lists. He does 
not assist the attractions of the races, like the actors at 
the theatre, the riders at the circus, or the posturers at the 
looses Plastiques. Absolutely and literally, he is the only 
individual in Doncaster who stands by the brink of the 
full-fiowing race-stream, and is not swept away by it 
in common with all the rest of his species. Who is this 
modern hermit, this recluse of the St. Leger-week, this 
inscrutably ungregarious being, who lives apart from the 
amusements and activities of his fellow-creatures ? Surely, 
there is little difficulty in guessing that clearest and easiest 
of all riddles. Who could he be, but Mr. Thomas Idle 
Thomas had suffered himself to be taken to Doncaster, 
just as he would have suffered himself to be taken to any 
12 * • 


280 


TliE LAZY TOUR OF 


other place in the habitable globe which would guarantee 
hiinthetemporary possession of a comfortable sofa to vest 
his ankle on. Once established at the hotel, with his leg on 
one cushion and his back against another, he formally de- 
clined taking the slightest interest in any circumstance 
whatever connected with the races, or with the people 
who were assembled to see them. Francis Goodchild, 
anxious that the hours should pass by his crippled travel- 
ling-companion as lightly as possible, suggested that his 
sofa should be moved to the window, and that he should 
amuse himself by looking out at the moving panorama of 
humanity, which the view from it of the principal street 
presented. Thomas, however, steadily declined profiting 
bythe suggestioD. 

“ The farther I am from the window,’' he said, ‘‘ the 
better. Brother Francis, I shall be pleased. I have noth- 
ing in common with the one prevalent idea of all these 
people who are passing m the street. Why should I care 

to look at them ?” ♦ 

“ I hope I have nothing in common with the prevalent 
idea of a great many of them, either,” answered Goodchild, 
thinking of the sporting gentlemen whom he had met in 
the course of his wanderings about Doncaster. 

‘‘ But, surely, among all the people who are walking 
by the house, at this very moment, you may find ” 

Not one living creature,” interposed Thomas, “who is 
not, in one way or another, interested in horses, and who 
is not, in a greater or less degree, an adndrer of them. 
Now, I hold opinions in reference to these particular mem- 
bers of the quadruped creation, which may lay claim (as I 
believe) to the disastrous distinction of being unpartakeii 
by any other human being, civilized or savage, over the 
whole surface of the earth. Taking the horse as an animal 
in the abstract, Francis, I cordially despise him from every 
point of view.” 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


281 


“ Thomas/^ said Goodcliild, “ confinement to the house 
has begun to affect your biliary secretions. I shall go to 
the chemist’s and get you some physic.” 

“ I object,” continued Thomas, quietly possessing him- 
self of his friend’s hat, which stood on a table near him, — 
“ I object, first to the personal appearance of the horse. I 
protest against the conventional idea of beauty, as attached 
to that animal. I think his nose too long, his forehead too 
low, and his legs (except in the case of the cart-horse) 
ridiculously thin by comparison with the size of his body, 
Again, considering how big an animal he is, I object to 
the contemptible delicacy of hi-s constitution. Is he not 
the sickliest creature in creation ? Does any child catch cold 
as easily as a horse ? Does he not sprain his fetlock, for all 
his appearance of superior strength, a‘s easily as I sprained 
my ankle ? Furthermore, to take him from another point 
of view, what a helpless wretch he k ? No fine lady re- 
quires more constant waiting-on than a horse. Other 
animals can make their own toilette : he must have a groom. 
You will tell me that this is because we want to make his 
coat artificially glossy. Glossy ! Come home with me 
and see my cat,— my clever cat, who can groom herself. 
Look at your own dog ! see how the intelligent creature 
curry-combs himself with his own honest teeth ! Then, 
again, what a fool the horse is, what a poor, nervous fool ! 
He will start at a piece of white paper in the road as if it 
was a lion. His one idea, when he hears a noise that he is 
not accustomed to is to run away from it. What do you say 
to those two common instances of the sense and courage of 
this absurdly overpraised animal ? I might multiply them to 
two hundred, if I chose to exert my mind and waste my 
breath which I never do. I prefer comng at onceito my last 
charge against the horse, which is the most serious of all, 
because it affects his moral character. I accuse him bold- 
ly, in his capacity of servant to man, of slyness and treach-. 


282 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


ery. I brand him publicly, no matter how mild he may 
look about the eyes, or how sleek he maybe about the 
coat, as a systematic betrayer, whenever he can get tlio 
chance, of the confidence reposed in him. What do you 
mean by laughing and shaking your head at me ? 

Oh Thomas, Thomas ! ” said Mr. Goodchild. ‘‘ Yon 
had better give me my hat ; you had better let me get you 
that physic.^’ 

« I will let you get anything you like, including a com- 
posing draught for yourself,’^ said Thomas, irritably allud- 
ing to his fellow- apprentice’s inexhaustible activity, “ is 
you will only sit quiet for five minutes longer, and hear 
me out. I say again the horse is a betrayer of the con- 
fidence reposed in him ; and that opinion, let me add, if 

drawn from my own* personal experience, -and is not bas- 
ed on any fanciful theory whatever. You shall have two 
instances, two overwhelming instances. Let me start the 
first of these by asking what is the distinguishing quality 
which the Shetland Pony has arrogated to himself, and is 
still perpetually trumpeting through the world by means 
of popular report and books on Natural ITistory ? I see 
the answer in your face : it is the quality of being Sure- 
Footed. He professes to have other virtues, such as hardi- 
ness and strength, which you may discover on trial ; but 
the one thing which he insists on your believing, when you 
get on his back, is that he may be safely depended on not 
to tumble down with you. Very good. Some years ago, 
I was in Shetland with a party of friends. They in- 
sisted on taking me with them to the top of a precipice 
that overhung the sea. It was a great distance off, but 
they all determined to walk to it except me. I was wiser 
then than I was with you at Carrock, and I determined to 
be carried to the precipice. There was no carriage road 
in the island, and nobody offered (in consequence, I sup- 
pose, of the imperfectly-civilized state of the country) to 


TWO IDLK APPRENTICES. 


283 


bring me a sedan-chair, which is naturally what 1 should 
have liked best. A Shetland pony was produced instead. 
I remembered my Natural History, I recalled popular re- 
port, and I got on the little beast’s back, as any other man 
would have done in my position, placing implicit confidence 
in the sureness of his feet. And how did he repay that 
confidence? Brother Francis, carrying your mind on 
from morning to noon, picture to yourself a howling 
wilderness of grass and bog, bounded by low, stony hills. 
Pick out one particular spot in that imaginary scene, and 
sketch me in it, with outstetched arms, curved back, and 
h(X3ls in the air, plunging head foremost into a black patch 
of water and mud. Place just behind me the legs, the 
body, and the head of a sure-footed Shetland pony all 
stretched fiat on the ground, and you will have produced 
an accurate representation of a very lamentable fact. And 
the moral device, Francis, of this jiicture will be to testify 
that when gentlemen put confidence in the legs of Shetland 
ponies, they W'ill find to their cost that they are leaning on 
nothing but broken reeds. There is my first instance 
— and what have you got to say to that ? ” 

“Nothing; but I want my hat,” answered Goodchild, 
starting up and walking. restlessly about the room. 

“ You shall have it in a minute,” rejoined Thomas. 
“ My second instance ” — (Goodchild groaned, aud sat 
dov/n again) — “My second instance •is more appropriate 
to the present time and place, it refers to a race-horse. 
Two years ago an excellent friend of mine, who was de- 
sirous of prevailing on me to take regular exercise, and 
who was well enough acquainted with the weakness of my 
legs, to. expect no very active compliance with his wishes 
on their part, offered to make me a present of one of his 
horses. Hearing that the animal in question had started 
in life on the turf, I declined accepting the gift with many 
thanks ; adding, byway of explanation, that T looked on 


284 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 


a race-horse as a kind of embodied liurricami, npon winch 
no sane man of my character and habits conld be expect- 
ed to seat himself. My friend replied that, liowever ap- 
propriate my metaphor might be as applied to race-horses 
in general, it was singularly unsnitable as applied to the 
particular horse which he proposed to give me. From a 
foal upwards, this remarkable animal had been the idlest 
and most sluggish of his race. Whatever capacities for 
speed he might possess he had kept so strictly to himself, 
that no amount of training had ever brought them out. 
He had been found hopelessly slow as a racer, and hope- 
lessly lazy as a hunter, and was fit for-hothing but a quiet, 
easy life of it with an old gentlemen or an invalid. When 
I heard this account of the horse, I don’t mind confessing 
that my heart warmed to him. Visions of Thomas Idle 
ambling serenely on the back of a steed as lazy as himself, 
presenting to a restless world the soothing and composite 
spectacle of a kind of sluggardly Centaur, too peaceable 
in his habits to alarm anybody, swam attractively before 
my eyes. I went to look at the horse in the stable. 
Nice fellow I he was fast asleep, with a kitten on his back. 
I saw him taken out for an airing by the groom. If. he 
had the trousers on his legs, I should not have known 
them from my own, so deliberately were they lifted up, so 
gently were they put down, so slowly did they get over 
the ground. From tliat moment, I gratefully accepted 
my friend's offer. I went home ; the horse followed me 
— by a slow train. Oh, Francis, how devotedly I be- 
lieved in that horse 1 how carefully I looked after all his 
little comforts ! I had never gone the length of hiring a 
man-servant to wait on myself ; but I went to the expense 
of hiring one to wait upon him If I thought -a little of 
myself, when I bought the softest saddle that could be had 
for money, I thought also of my horse. When the man 
at the shop afterwards offered me spurs and a whip, I 


TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 


2«5 


turned from him with horror. When I sallied out for my 
first ride, I went purposely unarmed with the means of 
hurrying my steed. He proceeded at his own pace every 
step of his way ; and when he stopped at last, and blew 
out both his sides with a heavy sigh and turned his sleepy 
head and looked behind him, I took him home again, as. I 
might take home an artless child who said to me, ^ If you 
please, sir, I am tired.’ For a week, this complete har- 
mony between me and my horse lasted undisturbed. At 
the end of that time, when he had made quite sure of my 
friendly confidence in his laziness, when he had thoroughly 
acquainted himself with all the little weaknesses of my seat 
(and their name is Legion), the smouldering treachery and 
ingratitude of the equine nature blazed out in an instant. 
Without the slightest provocation from me, with nothing 
passing him at the time but a pony-chaise driven by an old 
lady, he started in one instant from a state of sluggish de- 
pression to a state of frantic high spirits. He kicked, he 
plunged, he shied, he pranced, he capered fearfully. I sat 
on him as long as I could, and when I could sit no longer, 
I fell off. No, Francis ! this is not a circumstance to be 
laughed at, but to be wept over. What would be said of a 
Man who had requited my kindness in that way ? Range 
over all the rest of the animal creation, and where will 
you find me an instance of treachery so black as this ? 
The cow that kicks down the milking-pail may have some 
laaison for it; she may think herself taxed too heavily to 
contribute to the dilution of human tea and the greasing 
of human bread. The tiger who springs out on me un- 
awares has the excuse of being hungry at the time, to say 
notbing of the further justification of being a total stran- 
ger to me. The very flea who surprises me in my sleep 
may defend his act of assassination on the ground that I, 
in my turn, am always ready to murder him when I am 
awake. I defy the whole body of Natural Historians to 


286 


THE LAZY TOUR OF 

• 

move me. logically, off the ground that I have taken in 
regard to the horse. Receive back your hat, Brother 
Francis, and go to the chemist’s, if you please ; for I 
have now done. Ask me to take anything you like, ex- 
cept an interest in the Doncaster races. Ask me to look 
at anything you like, except an assemblage of people all 
animated by feelings of a friendly and admiring nature 
towards the horse. You are a remarkably well-informed 
man, and you have heard of hermits. Look upon me as 
a member of that ancient fraternity, and you will sensi- 
bly add to the many obligations which Thomas Idle is 
proud to owe to Francis Goodchild.” 

Here, fatigued by the effort of excessive talking, dis- 
putatious Thomas waved one hand languidly, laid his head 
back on the sofa-pillow, and calmly closed his eyes. 

At a latter period, Mr. Goodchild assailed his travel 
ling companion boldly, from the impregnable fortress of 
common sense. But Thomas, though tamed in body by 
drastic discipline, was still as mentally unapproachable as 
ever on the subject of his favorite delusion. 

The view from the window after Saturday’s breakfast 
is altogether changed. The tradesmen’s families have all 
come back again. The serious stationer’s young woman 
of all work is shaking a duster out of the window of the 
combination breakfast-room ; a child is playing with a 
doll, where Mr. Thurtell’s . hair was brushed; a sanitar}' 
scrubbing is in progress on the spot where Mr. Palmer’s 
braces were put on. No signs of the Races are in the 
streets, but the tram23S and the tumble-down carts and 
trucks laden tyth drinking-forms and tables and remnants 
of booths that are making their way out of the town as 
fast as they can. The Angel, which has been cleared for 
action all the week, already begins restoring every neat 
and comfortable article of fuiaiiture to its own neat and 
comfortable place. The Angel’s daughters (pleasanter 


287 


TWO IDLE APP(iEXTrCE.S. 


angels IMr. Goodchild never saw^ nor more quietly expert 
in their business, nor more superior to the common vice 
of being above it) have a little time to rest, and to air 
their cheerful faces among the dowers in the yard. It is 
market day. The market looks unusually natural, com- 
fortable, and wholesome; the market-people too. The 
town seei!is quite restored, when, hark ! a metallic bray — 
The Gong-donkey ! 


The wretched animal has not cleared off with the rest, 
but is here, under the window. How much more incon- 
ceivably drunk now, how much more begrimed of 
paw, how much more tight of calico hide, how much 
more stained and daubed and dirty and dunghilly, from 
his horrible broom to his tender toes, who shall say! He 
cannot even shake the bray out of himself now, witliout 
laying his cheek so near to the mud of the street that he 
pitches over after delivering it. Now, prone in the mud,^ 
and now backing himself up against shop-windows, the 
owners of which come out in terror to move him ; now, in 
the drinking-shop, and now in the tobacconist’s where he 
goes to buy tobacco, and makes his way into the parlor, 
and where he gets a cigar, which in half-a-minute he for- 
gets to smoke ; now dancing, now complimenting My Lorn, 
the Colonel, the Noble Captain, and Your Honorable 
Worship, the Gong-donkey kicks up his lieels, occasion- 
ally braying, until suddenly he beholds the dearest friend 
he has in the world coming down the street. 

The dearest friend the Gong-donkey lias in the world, 
is a sort of Jackall, in a dull mangy black hide, of such 
small pieces that it look as if it were made of! blacking bot- 
tles turned inside out and cobbled togethei\ ' The dearest 
friend in the world (inconceivably drunk too) advances 
at the Gong-donkey, with a nana on each thigh, in a series 
of humorous springs and stops, wagging his head as he 
comes. Tlie Gong-donkey nvgarding him with attention 


288 THE T.AZY TOUIl 01^ TWO IDLE APPRENTICES. 

and with the warmest affection, suddenly perceives that he 
is the greatest enemy he has in the world, and hits him 
hard in the countenance. The astonished Jackall closes with 
Donkey, and they roll orer a id over in the mud, pummelling 
one another. A Police Inspector, supernaturally endow- 
ed with patience, who has long been looking on from the 
Guildhall-steps, says, to a myrmidon,^ Lock ’em up ! Bring 
’em in !’* 

Appropriate finish to the Grand Pace W eek. The Gong- 
donkey, captive and last trace of it, conveyed into limbo, 

where they cannot do better than keep him until next Pace 

Woek. The Jackall is wanted too, and is much looked 
for, over the way and up and down. But*, having had the 
good-fortune to be undermost at the time of tlie captui'e, 
he has vanished into air. 

On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Goodchild walks out and 
looks at the Course. It is quite deserted ; heaps of 
broken crockery and bottles are i*aised to its memory; 
and correct cards and other fragments of paper are blow- 
ing about it, as the regulation little paper-books, carried by 
the French soldieis in their breasts, were seen, soon after 
the battle was fought, blowing idly about the plains of 
Waterloo.. 

Where will these present idle leaves be blown by the 
idle winds, and where will the last of them be one day, lost 
and forgotten ? An idle question, and an idle thought ; and 
with it Mr. Idle fitly makes his bow, and Mr. Goodchild 
ills, and thus ends the Lazy Tour of Two Idle Appren- 
tices. 


THE 


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To MAINTAIN the capabilities of the brain and nerves to per- 
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LOVELL’S LIBRARY.-CATALOGTJE. 


Mysterious Island, PtII.15 
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Tom Brown at Oxford, 

2 Parts, each 15 

Thicker than Water. . ..20 

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Scottish Chiefs, Part I . . 20 
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Willy Reilly 20 

The Nautz Family 20 

Great Expectations 20 

Hist.of Pendennis,Pt I.. 20 
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Brother Jacob, etc 10 

The Executor 20 

American Notes 15 

The Newcomes, Part I.. 20 
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The Privateersman 20 

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Phantom Fortune 20 

The Red Eric 20 

Lady Silverdale’s Sweet- 
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The Four Macnicol’s ... 10 
Mr.PisistratusBrown,M. P.io 
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Book of Snobs 10 

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The Disowned 20 

Little Dorrit, Part 1 20 

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Belinda 20 

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Monarch of Mincing 

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Eight Years’ Wanderings 

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Adventures of Philip, Pt 1 . 15 
adventures of Philip, Pt II.15 
Knickerbocker History 
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249. 

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252. 

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238. The Virginians, Part I.. 20 
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Erling the Bold 20 

Kenelm Chillingly 20 

Deep Down 20 

Samuel Brohl & Co 20 

Gautran 20 

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What Will He Do With 

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248. Life of Webster, Part 1 . 15 
Life of Webster, Pt. II. 15 

The Crayon Papers 20 

The Caxtons, Part I 15 

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Autobiography of An- 
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Critical Reviews, etc. ... 10 

Lucretia 20 

Peter the Whaler 20 

Last of the Barons. Pt I.15 
Last of the Barons,Pt.ILi5 

256. Eastern Sketches. 15 

257. All in a Garden Fair.... 20 

File No. 113 

The Parisians, Part I . . .20 
The Parisians, Part II.. 20 
Mrs. Darling’s Letters. . .20 
Master Humphrey’s 
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262. Fatal Boots, etc 10 

263. The Alhambra 15 

264. The Four Georges 10 

265. Plutarch’s Lives, 5 Pts. $1. 

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268. When the Ship Comes 

Home 10 

269. One False, both Fair.... 20 

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My Novel, 3 Parts, each.20 
Conquest of Granada. ..20 

Sketches by Boz 20 

A Christmas Carol, etc. . 15 
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276. Harold, 2 Parts, each... 15 

277. Dora Thorne 20 

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280. Fitzboodle Papers, etc. . 10 

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Famous Funny Fellows. 20 

Irish Sketches, etc 20 

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307. Yellowplush Papers 10 

308. Life of Mahomet, Part 1 . 15 
Life of Mahomet, Pt. II. 15 

309. Sketches and Travels in 

f London 

310. Oliver Goldsmith,Irving.20 

311. Captain Bonneville .... 20 

312. Golden Girls 20 

313. English Humorists 15 

314. Moorish Chronicles 10 

315. Winifred Power 20 

316. Great HoggartyDiamond 10 

317. Pausanias 

318. The New Abelardi . . . . 20 

319. A Real Queen ....20 

320. The Rose and the Ring.20 

321. Wolfert’s Roost and Mis- f 

cellanies, by Irving* • • • 10 

322. Mark Seawo'rth 20 

323. Life of Paul Jones 20 

324. Round the World 20 

325. Elbow Room 20 

326. The Wizard’s Son 25 

327. Harry Lorrequer 20 

328. How It All Came Round. 20 

329. Dante Rosetti’s Poems. 20 

330. The Canon’s Ward. . . . .20 

331. Lucile, by O. Meredith. 20 

332. Every Day Cook Book.. 20 

333. Lays of Ancient Rome . . 20 

334. Life of Bums 20 

335. The Young Foresters... 20 

336. John Bull andHis Island 20 

337. Salt Water, by Kingston. 20 

338. The Midshipman 20 

339. Proctor’s Poems 20 

340. Clayton’s Rangers 20 

341. Schiller’s Poems - 20 

342. Goethe’s Faust 20 

343. Goethe’s Poems 20 

344. Life of Thackeray 10 

345. Dante’s Vision of Hell, 
Purgatory and Paradise . . 20 

346. An Interesting Case 20 

347. Life of Byron, Nichol. . . 10 

348. Life of Bunyan 10 

349. Valerie’s Fate .....10 

350. Grandfather Lickshingle. 20 

35 X. Lays of the Scottish Ca- 
valiers 20 

352. Willis’ Poems 20 

353. Tales of the French Re- 

volution 15 

3 54. Loom and Lugger ...... 20 

355. More Leaves from a Life 

in the Highlands 15 

356. Hygiene of the Brain. ..25 

357. Berkeley the Banker 20 

358. Homes Abroad 15 

350. Scott’s Lady of the Lake, 

f^with notes....... 20 

360. Modem Christianity a 
. civilized Heathenism.. .. 15 




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